IDE Optical drives on a SATA controller using an IDE to SATA converter

[Skinleech]

Hi all,

I'm currently running the following system:

A64 3200
1gb pc3200 ram
Asus K8V Deluxe Mobo
160gb Seagate SATA HDD
300GB Maxtor SATA HDD
Pioneer 108 IDE DVDRW
Pioneer IDE DVDROM (cant remember model name)
Dual boot XP32 & XP64

I currently have the two SATA drives plugged into the motherboards onboard Via SATA controller, and the two optical drives plugged into IDE 3 & 4. I recently picked up 2 IDE to SATA converters so that I can ditch IDE fully, and switch over the optical drives to SATA.

I enabled the onboard Promise controller, and connected one of IDE drives to it via the converter (and unplugged the other drive from the molex & ide channel), but the Promise won't detect it. After some googling I don't think Promise controllers support ATAPI devices, so that's a no go.

As another option, I unplugged the Maxtor SATA drive from the Via controller, then plugged the same optical drive into the port the Maxtor used to occupy. On boot up, the Via controller recognises the Seagate drive and the Pioneer DVDRW, but then hangs with the error "NTLDR is missing, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart" or something similar.

Why is this happening? I've not changed the SATA port for the Segate drive (which is the boot drive) so I can't see why the system won't boot. I did try flipping the SATA ports round, but got the same error until I unplugged the optical drives from the controller, and replaced the Seagate and Maxtor in their original configs. Am I out of luck with the Via controller too?

Has anyone had any experience of SATA optical drives, epsecially using coverters, and especially on the this mobo? Ideally I'd try to connect both optical drives to the Via controller, and both HDDs to the Promise controller (in IDE mode) but I don't have time to do a Windows reinstall so that XP will read that the HDDs are on the new controller.

Cheers for any help - it'll be appreciated.

[aidanjt]

Make sure the drivers for the promise controller is installed on windows, then try hooking both hard drives into the promise controller, both cdroms into the VIA controller, make sure your boot priorities are correct..

I'm personally not all that bothered with using IDE for CD-ROMs, rounded ide cables aren't that bad so it makes the legacy interface bearable with my cabling.. I actually find SATA cables more irritating to shape, position, and plug in. :/

[eldren]

Frankly, it's not worth the effort of getting your ATAPI drives working on SATA. But if you must, check that the IDE-to-SATA convertors also support ATAPI. I know that some, such as the ones that came with the initial Abit NF7-S motherboards, don't.

[Skinleech]

Thanks for the tips guys - I got it working, kind of. XP32 is fine, I did as aidanjt suggested. X64 BSODs once the XP logo with the blue progress bar appears.

Will forget it for now, and look at it again after Xmas - is probably down to crappy Promise drivers for X64.

Cheers.

[dave87]

The ones that came with the nf7-s v2 did however, I've got and used 2 on dvd-rw drives.

Dave

[Garlic bread]

I've bough an IDE to sata conerter for my dvd writer, the bios states'device not detected' - I;ve seen some advice saying these don't work if you run nIntel matrix manager. Any clues how to solve this and get the dvd working. Bios up to data , played with all SATA combinations, jumpers etc, all the obvious things