# FDD or IDE



## Kornowski

Hi,

I have the ASRock K7NF2-RAID MOBO at the moment:





I have one IDE HDD plugged into the blue slot, which I think is the IDE slot. I have 2 optical drives plugged into the black slot just below the blue slot.

Is this the FDD connector, or another IDE connector?

I'm getting the Gigabyte GA-965P-S3:






Can I use my two optical drives on one of the ports, the black one?

And use an IDE HDD on the IDE slot?

Thanks for the help


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## Kornowski

Anybody?


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## StrangleHold

On the first board the Floppy port is over by the last PCI slot at the edge, the second board only has 1 IDE and 1 floppy, the green one is the IDE


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## Kornowski

I have two optical drives in my computer at the moment, but I'm taking one of them out, Can I have an IDE cable to go to a HDD and then a DVD/RW drive?

Also, How can I mount a HDD in a 5 1/2 bay?

Or should I just get a SATA drive?


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## StrangleHold

Yeah you can put a Hard drive and DVD on the same IDE, Hard drive-Master, DVD Slave. Why would you want to mount the hard drive in the 5.5 bay and yes you can use a Sata drive too


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## Geoff

The green on is the IDE, and the black on is the floppy.


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## Jack Bauer

Kornowski said:


> I have two optical drives in my computer at the moment, but I'm taking one of them out, Can I have an IDE cable to go to a HDD and then a DVD/RW drive?
> 
> Also, How can I mount a HDD in a 5 1/2 bay?
> 
> Or should I just get a SATA drive?



I would get a sata they are cheaper than ide and you get more gigabytes for your dollar when you buy sata.


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## Kornowski

I'd want to mount it in the 5 1/2 bay because the rounded IDE cable I have won't reach the HDD bay and the 5 1/2 bay.

I may go with a SATA one, I just hope that the BIOS will recognize it without the use of the drivers off a floppy drive.

Whats a good size chache to have on a HDD?


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## Jack Bauer

Kornowski said:


> I'd want to mount it in the 5 1/2 bay because the rounded IDE cable I have won't reach the HDD bay and the 5 1/2 bay.
> 
> I may go with a SATA one, I just hope that the BIOS will recognize it without the use of the drivers off a floppy drive.
> 
> Whats a good size chache to have on a HDD?



The bios should reconige the sata but you may have to enable using sata in the bios for it to work.  

A good size cache is either 8MB or 16MB either is fine.


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## Kornowski

I thought you had to install SATA drivers off a floppy disc, but I have heard that it sometimes doesn't need it...

Right, So just enable it in the BIOS, where would it be?

Ok, sure, thanks.


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## PohTayToez

I don't know about the ASRock, but the Gigabyte should definitely be able to boot from a SATA from the get-go.


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## Kornowski

Cool, so you mean if the SATA was the only drive I had on the Gigabyte it should be recognized in the BIOS for me to install Windows on without having to put any drivers on?

Thanks for the help


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## PohTayToez

Yup... boards that only have 1 IDE are designed to have a SATA as their main drive, and should come with the drivers already installed.


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## The_Other_One

Regardless of what drive you end up with, I figure I should note; when I tried to load Vista on my PC, it wouldn't work.  I threw in a spare 60GB drive I had laying around, but for some reason, it would only work with a SATA drive.  I have no clue why :-/


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## Kornowski

PohTayToez said:


> Yup... boards that only have 1 IDE are designed to have a SATA as their main drive, and should come with the drivers already installed.



Excellent, thanks for the help 



The_Other_One said:


> Regardless of what drive you end up with, I figure I should note; when I tried to load Vista on my PC, it wouldn't work.  I threw in a spare 60GB drive I had laying around, but for some reason, it would only work with a SATA drive.  I have no clue why :-/



That's strange, I won't be using Vista anyway, but thanks for the heads up!


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