SATA drive as boot drive on Abit NF7-S v2

[DuckDodgers]

Ok so it is a bit archaic but.... it's still runs great. My OS drive is an old WD 40g drive that is a good 10yrs old and I am afraid I am living on the edge with it. I want to install a SATA drive as the primary drive. I have an open SATA connector. The primary drive now is an IDE drive. Can I run the SATA as primary for my OS (WIN7).
Thanks in advance.

 

[DuckDodgers]

Anyone out there have any ideas?

 

[Automata]

Please don't bump threads so often for the sole purpose of getting a response. Members post here on a volunteer basis, so it may take some time to get a response.

Have you tried to install to see if it works? In the time you have waited, you could have tried it.

 

[DuckDodgers]

Please don't bump threads so often for the sole purpose of getting a response. Members post here on a volunteer basis, so it may take some time to get a response.

Have you tried to install to see if it works? In the time you have waited, you could have tried it.

Sorry, I never considered once to be excessive. Been a awhile since I have been on these forums and may have forgot some of the etiquette, and, I have been aware that this forum is "volunteer based", ever since I joined in 2004 ..... My most humble apologies if I have stepped out of line. Now that the spanking is over....

Actually, I am not waiting on an answer to do the install, I will move forward regardless of getting an answer here or not. I just thought someone here may have done this before, being an older board I was not sure if there was a process or even if it was feasible. It's been a while since I have messed with my machine. My time is limited so I was hoping to avoid any major "Known" issues. That is why I posted here.

And again thank you for the enlightenment.

 

[Automata]

With a board that old, I would be surprised if anyone else here has tried it.

 

[freeagent]

You are going to need to download the sata driver and load it onto a floppy disk or USB drive and hit F6 at the start of the install when prompted for a driver. Back in the day I just slipstreamed it into my copy of XP. Not sure if you can still do that with 7..

 

[DuckDodgers]

You are going to need to download the sata driver and load it onto a floppy disk or USB drive and hit F6 at the start of the install when prompted for a driver. Back in the day I just slipstreamed it into my copy of XP. Not sure if you can still do that with 7..

I am already runnig an SATA drive as my e:drive, is there a difference then for running an SATA as an OS drive that require different drivers?

 

[DuckDodgers]

With a board that old, I would be surprised if anyone else here has tried it.

Yeah, I am thinking about building a new box. I built this one in 2004, over clocked it from 1.8 to almost 2.2. It's been runnin 24/7 for the last 9 years, except when I did the upgrade to Win7 and added some memory, it has run flawlessly the whole time.... Kinda like an old dog..

 

[freeagent]

If you didnt need to install a driver to use it for 7 then chances are it may already have the driver for install.. I havent used that board since 2005 or so.. shortly after a64 (939) was released

 

[jiggamanjb]

I have a NF7 rig sitting next to me and have swapped out IDE and SATA drives as the OS drive many times without issue. The only problem is if you don't have the drivers slipstreamed into your OS boot disk then you have to do the F6 floppy. If you are just going to image your IDE drive to a new SATA drive you will be fine. Win 7 may throw up an error on your first boot and you will have to have windows repair the boot options, but it should be not an issue after that.

 

[moz_21]

Windows 7 should have the driver built in. easiest way would be to load up the installer and see if it finds the drive on the sata controller.

 

[DuckDodgers]

So, if I pull the plug on all my IDE drives and leave only the optical and SATA drives connected, will Windows use the SATA drive as the C: drive? What happens if I leave one of the IDE drives ( not the current "C" drive, my D: drive) connected?

 

[jiggamanjb]

The IDE drive shouldn't matter since it isn't marked as the active boot disk.

When you are installing Win 7 it will ask you where you want to install. Just make sure you pick the SATA drive and everything should be smooth.

 

[DuckDodgers]

The IDE drive shouldn't matter since it isn't marked as the active boot disk.

When you are installing Win 7 it will ask you where you want to install. Just make sure you pick the SATA drive and everything should be smooth.

Great thanks ... I'll try that.

 

[madhatter256]

One thing you will have to do is go into the BIOS and set the SATA HDDs as the first-boot items, so that the BIOS does not boot the IDE drive.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

I'm going to move my question here and thread-jack you since I have the same question.

Just a quick question, does anyone know if it is possible to run a Sata hard drive in IDE mode with an Abit NF7-S motherboard?

I have one, it has Sata ports, but if I run it in anything other than Raid mode it doesn't see the drives at all and they are not bootable (even with an OS already installed on them).

I've tried multiple drives, multiple cables, and looked all through the bios; however, I have as of yet been unable to figure out a solution.

The drives are known to be good, but yet they don't show up at all in the BIOS, nor during the bootup drive checks, they only show up in the Raid menu.

I tried to install XP SP3 Home and Professional editions install disks, and neither could even see the hard drive if I used a Sata drive.

What point in the install are you talking about with this "prompt for driver"?

 

[JLK03F150]

At the very start of booting from WinXP disk you will see F6 to load drivers flash across the bottom of the screen. Very short time period to respond.

 

[DuckDodgers]

One thing with the NF7s is that the sata speed is only 150mb per sec, I am not pursuing this anymore because the drive I have is 6G per sec. which probably will not work. So I am upgrading and will use all my old stuff as a server.

 

[Automata]

If you are using a mechanical hard drive, it isn't going to hit that speed, so it doesn't matter how fast the port is.