Running SATA as operating System not IDE

I have always used IDE as I wanted to wait for SATA to go down in price and become more common. I have 2 SATA connectors on my MSI? motherboard and the normal 2 cd drives and 2 harddrives IDE spots. I unplugged the IDE as it had a virus and figured I would jump to the Caviar Black 1tB SATA. I plugged it in and installed the operating system on it. Worked fine. Then I wanted to transfer my backups from my other SATA backup and IDE HD's to the new one. i plugged them in separately, first the IDE. Wouldn't go past boot screen as it said to install boot system drive. I unplugged and tried the SATA and said the same thing.
What is the deal with the operating system on the SATA instead of the IDE and doing this? I didn't see anything in the BIOS saying which HD to boot to, just has hard drive, CDROM, Floppy, you know, the normal. Not SATA HD or HD 0 or HD 1. Nothing like the new ones have. Is it possible that I can't have the operating system (XP) on the SATA and have access to the other SATA and IDE channels? I'm throughly confused...please help me.

Thanks

DJ

You need to change the boot order, in the BIOS, probably.

On my systems...the SATA drives have a native higher boot priority than the IDE/PATA drives.

Take a look in the BIOS...connect the SATA drive singly and ensure that it is the specified boot drive.

See if it will boot.

Then...attach the IDE drive, ensuring that the SATA drive is still the primary/first boot option in the BIOS. The IDE drive should be picked up as just a secondary/storage drive. You may have to adjust the jumper setting on the PATA/IDE drive, after putting it on the end connector of the cable.

Louis

ok...I finally got to do what you said. I can get it so that it boots to the SATA and I can use both IDE still, but as soon as I get that other SATA drive ont here, the BIOS doesn't know what to boot to. Inside the BIOS it looks like it says SATA 0 Master and SATA 1 Master with the SATA 1 Master greyed out. I assume it doesn't let you boot to a SATA Operating system then, but if the operating system was on IDE then I would have access to both SATA independantly? It doesn't make sence. Why would that be greyed out in BIOS? It is the same way if I choose the SATA/IDE controller to be either "Combined" or "Enhanced" as Enhanced would let me use the IDE AND SATA drives at the same time and keep my CD-Rom and DVD-Rom then active.

Post screenshots of these SATA BIOS settings, please.

A picture is worth a thousand words in situations like yours...BIOS options and the manner in which they appear...vary system by system.

FWIW: It doesn't matter how many SATA drives are attached...any one of them can be set as the bootable option, as long as there is an O/S on the drive.

The boot options you select in the BIOS...are what determines which drives boot and in what sequence they are options.

Louis

how do I do a screen shot in the bios menu? will it hold that information hitting Prt Scr button as I paste it into this forum? or do you want me to find a digital camera and post photos that I took of the screen?

Windows Print Screen Key - http://www.seoconsultants.com/windows/print-screen/

How to take and share a screen shot in Windows - http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-take-and-share-a-screen-shot-in-windows/

How to post screenshots or images - http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=61232.0

I just take a screen shot, using the Print Screen key...and then load that into my graphics-editor. I then reduce the size and save it as a .jpg file and upload same as an attachment to my post.

Louis

I understand how to do a printscreen. I have done those many times before, but I don't know if that will work inthe BIOS section you wanted, as windows isn't loaded its just the BIOS menu. That file would be too large for just the BIOS chip to store it before windows can load to access the Harddrive. Just didn't think that I could do a printscreen in the BIOS BEFORE windows loaded, as thats the only time you can be in the BIOS.