addendum:

Is there even such a file, called "boot.ini" in W2K??????

I'm visiting family right now, in another state, so I don't have access to
my desktop, onto which the SATA drive will be "implanted," but my W2K
notebook does not have a "Win.ini" file. In fact, there are no *.ini files
of any type in the root directory. My windows explorer setup shows "hidden
files," so that is not the problem. I think that boot.ini might be found in
older MS operating systems such as W9x.

Ken



"Ken Fox" wrote in message
...
"Len" wrote in message
.. .
Have you considered enabling SATA and installing the driver BEFORE
making
the image for Ghost? You will also have to repair the boot.ini as it
will
not be looking in the proper location for boot files once you change the
drive to a new controler.

FWIW,
Len

Hi Len,

I appreciate your suggestions. My initial idea was to take advantage of
the
fact that this new Maxtor drive can function as both an SATA and as an IDE
drive (has connectors for both plus the SATA function is via a chip rather
than native, i.e. this drive is a converted IDE drive) by first putting
everything on there with the drive installed as an IDE type drive. I have
another HD in the box, currently the slave on the (same) primary IDE
channel, that functions solely as the repository for ghost images. I'm
assuming that ultimately I would want to switch the cabling and jumpers on
this "ghost drive" to make it the primary on that channel if I'm no longer
using 2 drives on that channel, because maybe performance would benefit
(just guessing on that, might make no difference whatsoever).

Anyway, the scenario I had cooked up was to load the SATA drivers on the
boot drive (but I'm not sure there are such specifically "sata" drivers
for
this board/chipset), make a ghost image, then put the ghost image onto the
SATA drive partition via the IDE cable, then switch the cabling over to
SATA. But from what you are suggesting, which sounds like a great idea,
is
to first put this drive in as an additional drive, get it recognized by
W2K,
possibly use this as the opportunity to format it/partition it, then make
the ghost image to be redeposited onto the new drive which will become the
"C" drive, same as the original IDE drive.

What I'm not clear on is what I would need to do to "repair" the boot.ini
file. Of course I would change the boot order in the P4P800 BIOS to make
the new SATA partition the first boot partition, and I sort of assumed the
OS would simply just treat it like it was the old "C" drive, because the
old
drive would no longer even be in the box.

But it sounds like I am missing a step somewhere as involves the boot.ini
file.

I'm not exactly expecting the machine to get a *huge* performance boost
from
this, but the Intel controller on the primary/secondary IDE channel is
limited to ATA 100 even though the existing drive is ATA-133. By spending
$20 or $30 more than I might have gotten an IDE 160GB drive and instead
getting this SATA drive, I can *theoretically* pick up, with incredible
luck, as much as a 50% on drive function alone. At the same time I'm
replacing my ancient recycled P4 and PC2100 DDR RAM, so the total benefit
could even possibly be *noticeable.*

If you could suggest to me how I might repair the boot.ini file to fit
this
scenario, I'd greatly appreciate it!

TIA,

ken





"Ken Fox" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I've got a P4P800 Deluxe running well now with 4 HDs including a RAID
Mirror
for data only.

I'm building another system, a SFF box, into which I'm going to put
some
older components, to try to learn about Linux, which is not the point
of
this post!

I decided to take this opportunity to swap out the 120gig EIDE Hard
Disk
I
use for my system partition, with the rest (the majority) of the disk
being
used for storing large video files. My plan is to swap out the 120
EIDE
disk and replace it with a Maxtor 160gig 7200 RPM 8MB cache SATA drive
I've
ordered from Newegg. Presumably I would plan to partition this 160gig
disk
into a 30 or 35GB system/boot partition for W2K, and use the rest for
my
video files in a separate partition. Currently my W2K system is
upgraded
to
include all service packs (SP4) plus patches to date.

Anyway, I was intending to use an image (Norton Ghost 2003) of my old
system partition and to put it back onto the new system partition of
the
new
160GB SATA drive. Norton Ghost is compatible with SATA drives
according
to
the Symantec knowledge base. My understanding is that I need to have
the
SATA driver loaded but as far as I can tell there is no separate SATA
driver, merely the Intel chipset driver includes this driver. But I'm
not
really sure about this nor can I find the answer to this in a google
groups
search of this and other ngs. I did read a post or two that implied
it
was
best to have installed the SATA driver during the initial install of
W2K
but
trying to do that now with all my other programs loaded would be a
nightmare
for this system that is only 6 weeks old at most! The thought of
having
to
do THAT (complete reinstall of all software) would be enough to
convince
me
to put the sata drive in the new SFF system and leave the present
setup
as-is.

Any advice on how best to proceed with this situation would be most
appreciated. My SATA drive will be installed directly to the mobo
with
a
serial drive cable, not through an add-on card.

Thanks in advance for all advice!

Ken