IDE Mode and Installing Windows XP

[AngelicPenguin]

Hi

I recently put together a Gigabyte P35 DS4 system and need to install windows xp on a SATA drive that already has data on it (not that I think that matters, but it's not a new drive)

I have a floppy drive, but I can't think of a way to get the SATA drivers on the disk as my main computer is now apart :) (and my wife's laptop has no floppy.)

Can I just use IDE mode? Or does that lower performance to IDE levels? Could I set IDE mode on, install, then switch to SATA mode (or whatever it's called)?

I plan to put VISTA on here at some point soon, that's why I'm not terribly concerned about loading XP on a drive that already has stuff on it. But as I will probably have it this way for a few months I don't want it to run at IDE speeds!

On a related note, if I run in IDE mode, I lose AHCI? From reading about it, I can't figure out if that would be a loss. If I could switch to SATA mode would that get reenabled anyway?

Thanks for any help!
-Matthew

[tuskenraider]

Can I just use IDE mode? Or does that lower performance to IDE levels? Could I set IDE mode on, install, then switch to SATA mode (or whatever it's called)?

On a related note, if I run in IDE mode, I lose AHCI? From reading about it, I can't figure out if that would be a loss. If I could switch to SATA mode would that get reenabled anyway?

Thanks for any help!
-MatthewYou can use IDE mode without a performance hit as there is no single hard drive that can overcome its spec. Might be a limitation of burst speeds from the cache, but minute at best. You can switch to ACHI(your "SATA mode") mode later based on instructions here (http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831). Personally I wouldn't waste my time, like I did. It'll give you hot-swapping ability and NCQ support basically.

[AngelicPenguin]

Ahh...TuskenRaider to the rescue again.

I left it on IDE mode, but lo and behold to my dismay both my SATA drives from my old box were Dynamic Drives, which I guess means windows xp can't just install on it. :(

Originally from my old machine I had a 200 Gig WD drive (PATA), a 300 Gig Seagate (SATA), and a 400 Gig Seagate (SATA.) My plan was to just use the old windows install on the new machine until I got Vista, but the WD drive seems to have died. On bootup the new machine says there was a read error or something like that and most of the time it gives this awful clicking sound from the drive. Now I remember why I had sworn off WD and only buy Seagates with their 5 year warranties.

I guess I'll pick up one of those 500 Gig SATA Seagate drives w/ 32 megs of cache to get windows on. I was thinking about doing those in a RAID setup at some point anyway. You guys pointed out that RAID 10 was really the performance/redundancy king (as 5 had CPU overhead.) If I bought 3 more at some point, would that be a really nice HDD setup? The redundancy seems almost as appealing as the speed at this point after the WD died. How does it work in RAID 10 when a drive dies/is failing? Does it just to continue to work, but gives you some sort of notification that something is wrong w/ one of the drives?

Thanks for the help and advice!
Matthew

[shadin]

Yeah, I benchmarked in ACHI and IDE mode both just for my own curiosity, and didn't see any measurable difference in a one-drive setup.

[tuskenraider]

I left it on IDE mode, but lo and behold to my dismay both my SATA drives from my old box were Dynamic Drives, which I guess means windows xp can't just install on it.Of course you can, you have the option to reformat the drive during install. Now just moving it to another machine to access files does seem problematic based on issues I've seen here.

The redundancy seems almost as appealing as the speed at this point after the WD died. How does it work in RAID 10 when a drive dies/is failing? Does it just to continue to work, but gives you some sort of notification that something is wrong w/ one of the drives?

Thanks for the help and advice!
MatthewYou get a notification and then option to rebuild. You'd do that after replacing the bad drive if indeed it is proven to be bad. Sometimes an array can get corrupted for various reasons and just a rebuild will take care of it. Personally, I don't see the reason for redundancy on a personal computer unless you make a living with it. Imaging with a software program is much better than RAID1 if it is being considered as an OS/file backup.

[AngelicPenguin]

Of course you can, you have the option to reformat the drive during install.

Ya, but I don't want to lose anything on those drives. Since drive #1 failed, #2 and #3 have all the backups and everything installed.

Personally, I don't see the reason for redundancy on a personal computer unless you make a living with it. Imaging with a software program is much better than RAID1 if it is being considered as an OS/file backup.

You're probably right - I just like the idea of a "set it and forget it." With an image, you'd have to reimage periodically right? I guess that could be scheduled too. In what ways is imaging better? I'm curious if I should go that way then.

-Matthew

[tuskenraider]

You're probably right - I just like the idea of a "set it and forget it." With an image, you'd have to reimage periodically right? I guess that could be scheduled too. In what ways is imaging better? I'm curious if I should go that way then.

-MatthewYou reimage as you add programs and data or a schedule like you mentioned. That schedule depends on the individual and most image programs can just update the original image, making backup time a few minutes at best. Even a full 20GB backup only takes me 10min. or so. Obviously imaging is cheaper than buying a few drives, maybe a PSU upgrade, there is no setup hassle and your files remain prestine as the state they were first saved. RAID1, 10 doesn't protect against deleted or corrupted files as what happens to one file will be mirrored to the other. Over time an OS can become bloated or inefficient with old registry data, temp files, leftover program install files, and just plain time that seems to eat at Windows efficiency, etc. which usually requires a fresh OS install to correct. With an image you can be back to your freshly configured OS in little time. I keep one fresh version and one updated image so as I go through software updates over months I can then go back to the fresh image and just update once to my current software, skipping all the updates inbetween. Again, just my opinion.