SATA: Settings for Single HDrive and SATA Optical reader

[bustr]

Since SATA is for setting up RAID, if Im putting a single hard drive and an optical reader on connectors 1 and 2. Do I go into the BIOS and tell it to look at those SATA ports in IDE mode?

[BaldEagl]

SATA isn't for setting up raid (although you can).  It's Serial ATA which provides additional data bandwidth over traditional ATA. 

All you have to do is go into the BIOS and set the order in which you would like the drives read.  You can set them in any order you please.

For instance, I have a 250 Gb SATA Boot drive, a SATA DVD-ROM drive, a SATA DVD Burner, a floppy drive, a 200 Gig IDE drive (Master) and a 160 Gig IDE Drive (Slave)

Boot order is:

floppy drive
250 Gb SATA drive
SATA DVD-ROM drive
SATA DVD Burner

Hard Drive priority is:

250 Gb SATA drive
200 Gig IDE drive
160 Gig IDE Drive

None of this is in a RAID configuration and the SATA drives are in SATA mode.

[bustr]

Bald,

Thanks I was getting confused on the ASUS forum for the P5Q Pro. Seems like setting up RAID with SATA on the mother board I ordered is the only topic of interest to users at ASUS.

Does XP install a driver for the SATA controller or will I have to F6 and use a floppy?

[BaldEagl]

Bald,

Thanks I was getting confused on the ASUS forum for the P5Q Pro. Seems like setting up RAID with SATA on the mother board I ordered is the only topic of interest to users at ASUS.

Does XP install a driver for the SATA controller or will I have to F6 and use a floppy?

The SATA drivers are either the BIOS, the motherboard drivers or in XP (I don't recall at the moment).  There's nothing special you have to do.

[EDIT]  Beside the higher bandwidth the beauty of SATA is that it doesn't matter what ports you plug things into.  There is no master/slave relationship.  Each port/device is unique unto itself.  Therefore, you can plug drives into ports 2, 6 and 7 with the device priority being ports 6, 7 and 2.

[bustr]

Bald,

While waiting for your answer I RTFM'd the PDF manual I downloaded. You are spot on....and I used to tell people RTFM or asked ......have you read the manual?.........

But I have the perenial problem of the {SB Audigy 2 ZS} and the white connector that is nonstandard for HD Audio front panels on standard cases. Skuzzy reccomended not using the HiDef Audo chipset on my ASUS P5Q Pro mother board. It has the standard HD connector on the board....Oh Well.....