SATA hard drives

[rootbeer]

I have an emachines T6212 computer with the ability to add four SATA hard drives to its motherboard. I want to add one but really don't know what one is and don't know how to tell the machine to go to it versus the original drive. Somebody clue me in as to what I'm wanting to do and how to go about it. Thanks.

[Weather_Man]

I want to add one but really don't know what one is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sata

don't know how to tell the machine to go to it versus the original drive

You do this in the BIOS. It'll have options for boot order: SATA, IDE, CDROM, Floppy, etc. If you install Windows on the SATA drive, set SATA as first boot device. Otherwise, if you still use the original IDE drive for Windows like you are now, adding an SATA drive will just give it another drive letter and you can access via Explore or My Computer like any other partition or disk.

[Ivan]

What is your MOBO? Nforce?

with NFORCE pata goes before sata when it's harddisks

[rootbeer]

My board is an MSI MS-7093; it has four color-coded headers for adding SATA drives. This board is sometimes reffered to with a different number, something like RN-480 or 481...

[rootbeer]

I'm still wondering about this...

Is it possible to put FS2002 and a truckload of add-ons to it on this second drive and have a "virtual" second computer running inside my original machine, accessed when I tell Machine One to go to Machine Two and work out of there, piggy-backing on the original OS in Machine One? Am I making any sense? I think this how I'll have to go (if it can be done) because I can't see building a new machine to run an old FS.

Before you say "Get FS2004" or "Get FSX," please know that FS2002 is plenty good for me; I can't do much with it as it is; no sense in buying 2004 or FSX as I see it...

Thanks, all.

[ctjoyce]

What your talking about is having two drives. I have the same thing.

C: which is the main drive with windows
E: has all my games.

So yes you can have two HDDs running on the same comp, without being in RAID.

Cheers
Cameron

[rootbeer]

Now we're gettin' somewhere! Thanks for the hit back.

[ctjoyce]

No problem. Also to those looking to add a second HDD, I would suggest to go the way I did, and just add a second drive - RAID. The problem you run into with RAID (besides being a wee bit dificult to set up) is that if one disk fails, the RAID causes the other one to fail also. Thus you loose all your data with no way to get it back.

Cheers
Cameron

[rootbeer]

It'll be a cold day in Quito, Ecuador when I go that route!!

[4_Series_Scania]

No problem. Also to those looking to add a second HDD, I would suggest to go the way I did, and just add a second drive - RAID. The problem you run into with RAID (besides being a wee bit dificult to set up) is that if one disk fails, the RAID causes the other one to fail also. Thus you loose all your data with no way to get it back.

Cheers
Cameron

Pretty much the reason (s) I won't consider a RAID setup.

[rootbeer]

Seems that sometimes the old ways are still the best ways.

Now, here's a new problem...

I was fooling around the other day and feeling adventurous, clicked a few times to clear out my old websites that that taken up residence in my address bars and browser caches (I think this is what I was doing). Now, I have to physically log in every time I want to visit my favorite pages. It's like they've turned theior backs on an old friend.  I know I must have blown away some sort of cookie or something and it's getting to be a royal. Someone please tell me how to restore my rapid access to my sites. Thanks!

[Brett_Henderson]

There are SEVERAL ways to RAID (array) drives. Most of them seem (to me) to be solutions to problems that don't exist. Drives and computers are too fast and too cheap to open that can of worms.

The only version that ever made sense to me was to have two drives running in sync so that when one dies, you don't have to resort to expensive data-recovery.. The other drive is an exact duplicate.

[4_Series_Scania]

Someone please tell me how to restore my rapid access to my sites. Thanks!

Oooh, if only I had