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Unread 11 Oct 2005, 09:55   #1
JammyJim
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IDE to SATA Guide

This is a brief guide to Getting Windows to see your new SATA Drive and also cloning your entire old HDD across to the new Drive (including the operating system) so you can boot from the new SATA drive.



After spending 6 hours learning just about every way to bugger up the pc doing this upgrade I thought id share with you guys the problems and solutions.

This is just an explanation of what to do if you have an IDE based HDD currently and wish to upgrade to a SATA based drive on Windows XP.


Presuming you wish to keep your current files/folders etc read on :


The first package you may want to look into is Acronis True Image
http://www.acronis.com/download/

This piece of software is a trial version but will run fine for 30 days. It is capable of cloning your entire old hdd and putting it on the new one.
Download it and install it.


Stage 2 : Installing the SATA Drive

You should already have basic knowledge of how to install things on your pc so im not going to tell you to insert screw into hole and turn type stuff. The SATA connector either came with the hdd or more likely the motherboard if you built it yourself. The power for the Sata can either come from an adapter which takes a regular molex and turns it into a Sata power lead or from the PSU itself. Mine came from the PSU so no real issues here.

Stage 3 : Install SATA drivers into Windows which can be located either on your mobo driver CD or from your motherboard website maker. (might need a reboot)

Stage 4 : Getting windows to see the sata drive.
Goto Start - > Control Panel -> Administrator Tools - > Computer Management

At the bottom there will be 'disk management'. Click this and your unformatted new drive should appear in the list. Right click it and hit format. Once this has been done windows should be able to see it. (assign a drive letter too if you wish)

If you want you can leave it like this and just use the new drive for storage. However if you want to burn your old hdd to the new one then read on :


Stage 5 : Run the True Image 9 Software from acronis and select 'clone hard drive' or somesuch. (its fairly obvious which one). Follow the on screen instructions and make sure you dont **** up by telling it to clone your new drive to your old (major data loss ahoy !)

This is where things get a bit odd with Acronis. It will tell you to reboot so it can perform the clone procedure. If your system was anything like mine it will reboot and load partially into windows (the mouse lights came on). However the screen will remain blank. THe hdd will churn and the hdd light on the front will be going crazy. This is basically acronis copying across your entire hdd to the new SATA Drive. Leave it for around 1 to 2 hours depending on how fast your old drive is and how large it was. Once its 'done the job' the pc automatically restarts back into windows on your old hdd.

p.s. An alternative to the Acronis software is Norton Ghost which i had problems with. It does it all through windows and allows you to piss about whilst its performing the cloning procedure. However it also assigned a drive letter to the drive which meant that when I came to the final phase of this 'setup' my new 'primary' hdd was on drive letter f:\ instead of c:\. Im not sure whether this was my fault or Nortons but its upto you which you use.

Once acronis and its black screen are done and your back in windows. Click my computer and double click the new drive. You should be able to see an exact copy of your old hdd on it except theres about 100x more space free (hopefully).

Stage 6 : Get the SATA drivers from your motherboard website and load them onto a floppy disk. This is essential.

Stage 7 : Turn your pc off and unhook the old IDE cables. You can take out the molex power supply to it as well if you wish although its not necessary. Reboot the PC and head into your bios by pressing delete or f1 (or whatever). Find the part in the bios where you can select boot priority and which disk to boot from. Change it from your IDE to SATA drive. Your computer will restart.

Now this is the problematic bit. In some cases you have just finished the entire procedure. In mine i hadnt. I had another 4 hours of pain on the way. If it boots into windows and the hdd is on c:\ (your new sata) then give yourself a clap.

For those who live in the real world where Winxp is not 'the shit' but is infact 'a shit' read on :

If your PC, once it hits windows, reboots with a brief BSOD you need to go and find your winxp cd. Pop it into the drive and make sure it boots from the cd when your prompted to hit 'any key to boot from cd'

Windows install will begin loading. When you are prompted to hit F6 to install 3rd party RAID or SATA drivers hit F6. (this is important). (it wont promot immediately either but make sure you hit F6 or it wont see your hdd)

You now have two options. Either you can try and repair Winxp or you can do a fresh install. I suggest a fresh install because i had numerous problems with it repairing the installation. Follow the onscreen windows prompts for either. (You will need your sata driver disk at this point - oh and make sure you dont bugger about with the file partition on the new disk because it will most likely format it - keep everything 'default' it should find the old winxp installation so tell it to just install over or repair it (whichever you want to try)

If you do a repair and it works : hurrah you win
If you do a repair and things are a bit ****ed then i suggest you rerun windows setup and install from scratch a fresh install. ( I had to do this )


If you choose to do a fresh install : Once windows is back up and running and youve lost all your startmenu / dll files etc you can start rebuilding your startmenu and my documents by simply copying across your 'old' my documents etc in c:\documents and settings into your new folder. ( both shoudl be listed because it wont have overwritten your old stuff).

If you have a fresh install you will also be facing the likely possibility of installing service pack 2 among other things.

This is the most vitally important part :
once WinXP has rebooted in after a fresh install of the operating system get your motherboard cd driver disk and install the winxp Sata/ Raid drivers before you install sp2 or anything else.

Not doing this will land you back in square one with windows in a BSOD reboot cycle (i know because it happened to me). youd think installing the drivers when it prompted for them during the windows installation would be enough but seemingly not.

Get Winxp back upto a decent level of 'fixedness' and begin getting all your old program file entries working.

An easy way to get some stuff working is either to reinstall it or if you cant find the CD get the trial version off the net (I had this problem with an Adobe install. I have no idea where the hell the CD is for it so ended up installing a trial version of the same product in a different directory which reinstalled all the necessary dll and plugin files the 'full version' needed from the windows directory)


You can plug your old drive back in via the IDE cable and power if you wish. Either you can wipe it clean and use it as more space or you can keep it as a backup should your new SATA drive go into a spas and fail on you. (If you wish to boot from the IDE drive then just change the priority of booting in the BIOS back to IDE first instead of SATA).


Hope this helps any of you doing this kind of thing in the near future.

JJ
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Last edited by JammyJim; 11 Oct 2005 at 10:06.
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