I have a second computer I built myself for the kids, and the hard drive has failed. I happen to have a SATA hard drive lying around, but the motherboard on the computer doesn't have SATA capacity. If I buy a SATA controller card, will I be able to use the computer with just the SATA hard drive? In other words, can I boot the computer and install Windows in this configuration, or does adding a SATA card require an existing, working hard drive with an OS installed?
2007-09-06 01:36:42 · 2 answers · asked by KaeZoo 7 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
You should be fine, however you may have to adjust the bios. In the bios there is a boot order, this identifies all drive connections to the mother board, including added PCI cards. by default they are set up to find the onboard controllers first and then search out other connected drives, because of this it may try t boot off a cd rom drive first. This may work without a problem, however it may be slow starting up. If you change the setting to first look at the PCI card it will boot more quickly. either way the upgrade you described should work just fine. I would call the manufacturer of the motherboard or pc to know for sure, because every motherboard is a bit different, especially Dell they often have proprietarty bios in thier motherboards.
2007-09-06 02:54:06 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
unquestionably. at first, you may positioned 2 IDE drives on a cable, secondly, you may desire to have 2 IDE ports on your mobo helping an entire of four IDE units. Your sound card should not be takking considered one of THEM up. in case you have the innovative labs "LiveDrive" it extremely is meant to pass to its very own connector on the cound card, to not your mobos IDE ports. in case you nonetheless have greater advantageous than 4 ide units you may desire to purchase an upload on card that might actually help aother 4 IDE ports from CompUSA. they're between $15-30 i be attentive to they're decrease priced yet evaluate whether your mobo additionally has serialATA ports geared up in. they have been comming with for some years now. you may locate its a competent time to purchase a pair of latest not undemanding drives, replica your latest drives over, and flow them off the ide ports completely.
2016-10-18 03:03:07 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋