Will SATA Card Work?

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard Drive,
7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for my 6-year old
Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop. I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will
support a drive this large. I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11
Internal SATA, 3-Port PCI Express Card for $19.95. Will this card allow
the SATA drive to work properly in my system? I've never used a SATA drive
before.

Thanks!
Scott

Hi!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard
Drive, 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for
my 6-year old Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop.

So far so good. :-)

I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will support a drive this large.

That won't make a difference--just about every SATA card on the market has
its own onboard BIOS. Your system BIOS will never see or know about the SATA
drive, other than as a possible boot device provided by an add-in controller
card.

I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11 Internal SATA, 3-Port
PCI Express Card for $19.95.

With a six year old computer, you do not want a PCI Express SATA card. You
need a PCI SATA card, and there are lots of options. I would recommend
choosing one from a reputable vendor like SIIG, or someone else who has been
in business for a while:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA1012-S1 would be perfect for
one SATA drive if that's all you plan to add to your computer.

Note that if you are planning to use the new SATA drive to start your
computer, you may well want to install the controller card and its drivers
under your operating system before you migrate your data and operating
system to the new drive. If you don't, you will get a big surprise because
the operating system won't have any drivers to tell it how the use the new
SATA card and drive. (This is also important if you plan to simply "start
fresh" and reinstall everything from scratch with the new drive.)

If you are just going to use the new drive as additional storage, just
install it and the controller card. You can install the drivers afterwards.

William

In news:ifhdk.246094$yE1.137955@attbi_s21,
William R. Walsh typed on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:38:22 GMT:
Hi!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard
Drive, 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for
my 6-year old Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop.

So far so good. :-)

I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will support a drive this
large.

That won't make a difference--just about every SATA card on the
market has its own onboard BIOS. Your system BIOS will never see or
know about the SATA drive, other than as a possible boot device
provided by an add-in controller card.

I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11 Internal SATA,
3-Port PCI Express Card for $19.95.

With a six year old computer, you do not want a PCI Express SATA
card. You need a PCI SATA card, and there are lots of options. I
would recommend choosing one from a reputable vendor like SIIG, or
someone else who has been in business for a while:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA1012-S1 would be perfect
for one SATA drive if that's all you plan to add to your computer.

Note that if you are planning to use the new SATA drive to start your
computer, you may well want to install the controller card and its
drivers under your operating system before you migrate your data and
operating system to the new drive. If you don't, you will get a big
surprise because the operating system won't have any drivers to tell
it how the use the new SATA card and drive. (This is also important
if you plan to simply "start fresh" and reinstall everything from
scratch with the new drive.)

If you are just going to use the new drive as additional storage, just
install it and the controller card. You can install the drivers
afterwards.

William

I don't know Scott... I personally rather go with the external USB route
myself. I have many computers and most of them are laptops though. And
careful with TigerDirect. I have dealt with them for many years. They do
have great prices for the most part. Although their coupon system requires
about 4 hours worth of work to complete (this laptop I got from them for
example). Plus they do sell defective junk from time to time as well. The
last example I had when I purchased a Beyond Micro 320GB external USB HD. It
was DOA. And for this item, TigerDirect wouldn't take it back. They said I
had to deal with Beyond Micro instead which I did.

--
Bill
Gateway Celeron M 370 (1.5GHZ)
MX6124 (laptop) w/2GB
Windows XP Home SP2 120GB HD)
Intel(r) 910GML (64MB shared)

"William R. Walsh" wrote:

Hi!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard
Drive, 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for
my 6-year old Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop.

So far so good. :-)

I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will support a drive this large.

That won't make a difference--just about every SATA card on the market has
its own onboard BIOS. Your system BIOS will never see or know about the SATA
drive, other than as a possible boot device provided by an add-in controller
card.

I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11 Internal SATA, 3-Port
PCI Express Card for $19.95.

With a six year old computer, you do not want a PCI Express SATA card. You
need a PCI SATA card, and there are lots of options. I would recommend
choosing one from a reputable vendor like SIIG, or someone else who has been
in business for a while:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA1012-S1 would be perfect for
one SATA drive if that's all you plan to add to your computer.

Note that if you are planning to use the new SATA drive to start your
computer, you may well want to install the controller card and its drivers
under your operating system before you migrate your data and operating
system to the new drive. If you don't, you will get a big surprise because
the operating system won't have any drivers to tell it how the use the new
SATA card and drive. (This is also important if you plan to simply "start
fresh" and reinstall everything from scratch with the new drive.)

If you are just going to use the new drive as additional storage, just
install it and the controller card. You can install the drivers afterwards.

William

William,

I'm planning to start fresh with the 500GB drive, using it as the main boot drive
.....installing WinXP and then migrating the data over from the existing 80GB drive.
If I preinstall the controller card and drivers on the old drive and then do a fresh
OS install on the new drive, the WinXP install won't find those drivers, will it?
The old drive will be connected as a slave.

Thanks!
Scott

BillW50 wrote:

In news:ifhdk.246094$yE1.137955@attbi_s21,
William R. Walsh typed on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:38:22 GMT:
Hi!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard
Drive, 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for
my 6-year old Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop.

So far so good. :-)

I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will support a drive this
large.

That won't make a difference--just about every SATA card on the
market has its own onboard BIOS. Your system BIOS will never see or
know about the SATA drive, other than as a possible boot device
provided by an add-in controller card.

I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11 Internal SATA,
3-Port PCI Express Card for $19.95.

With a six year old computer, you do not want a PCI Express SATA
card. You need a PCI SATA card, and there are lots of options. I
would recommend choosing one from a reputable vendor like SIIG, or
someone else who has been in business for a while:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA1012-S1 would be perfect
for one SATA drive if that's all you plan to add to your computer.

Note that if you are planning to use the new SATA drive to start your
computer, you may well want to install the controller card and its
drivers under your operating system before you migrate your data and
operating system to the new drive. If you don't, you will get a big
surprise because the operating system won't have any drivers to tell
it how the use the new SATA card and drive. (This is also important
if you plan to simply "start fresh" and reinstall everything from
scratch with the new drive.)

If you are just going to use the new drive as additional storage, just
install it and the controller card. You can install the drivers
afterwards.

William

I don't know Scott... I personally rather go with the external USB route
myself. I have many computers and most of them are laptops though. And
careful with TigerDirect. I have dealt with them for many years. They do
have great prices for the most part. Although their coupon system requires
about 4 hours worth of work to complete (this laptop I got from them for
example). Plus they do sell defective junk from time to time as well. The
last example I had when I purchased a Beyond Micro 320GB external USB HD. It
was DOA. And for this item, TigerDirect wouldn't take it back. They said I
had to deal with Beyond Micro instead which I did.

--
Bill
Gateway Celeron M 370 (1.5GHZ)
MX6124 (laptop) w/2GB
Windows XP Home SP2 120GB HD)
Intel(r) 910GML (64MB shared)

Bill,

I looked in the BIOS of my 2002 Gateway 700x desktop and could find no indication
about how large a drive can be installed. It shows the current 80GB WD drive. I'd
like to replace it with a WD 250GB drive and use the 80GB drive as a secondary.

How can I found out how big a drive I can use?

Thanks!
Scott

In ,
Scott typed on Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:37:47 -0500:
BillW50 wrote:

In news:ifhdk.246094$yE1.137955@attbi_s21,
William R. Walsh typed on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:38:22 GMT:
Hi!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard
Drive, 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for
my 6-year old Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop.

So far so good. :-)

I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will support a drive this
large.

That won't make a difference--just about every SATA card on the
market has its own onboard BIOS. Your system BIOS will never see or
know about the SATA drive, other than as a possible boot device
provided by an add-in controller card.

I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11 Internal SATA,
3-Port PCI Express Card for $19.95.

With a six year old computer, you do not want a PCI Express SATA
card. You need a PCI SATA card, and there are lots of options. I
would recommend choosing one from a reputable vendor like SIIG, or
someone else who has been in business for a while:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA1012-S1 would be
perfect for one SATA drive if that's all you plan to add to your
computer.

Note that if you are planning to use the new SATA drive to start
your computer, you may well want to install the controller card and
its drivers under your operating system before you migrate your
data and operating system to the new drive. If you don't, you will
get a big surprise because the operating system won't have any
drivers to tell it how the use the new SATA card and drive. (This
is also important if you plan to simply "start fresh" and reinstall
everything from scratch with the new drive.)

If you are just going to use the new drive as additional storage,
just install it and the controller card. You can install the drivers
afterwards.

William

I don't know Scott... I personally rather go with the external USB
route myself. I have many computers and most of them are laptops
though. And careful with TigerDirect. I have dealt with them for
many years. They do have great prices for the most part. Although
their coupon system requires about 4 hours worth of work to complete
(this laptop I got from them for example). Plus they do sell
defective junk from time to time as well. The last example I had
when I purchased a Beyond Micro 320GB external USB HD. It was DOA.
And for this item, TigerDirect wouldn't take it back. They said I
had to deal with Beyond Micro instead which I did.

Bill,

I looked in the BIOS of my 2002 Gateway 700x desktop and could find
no indication about how large a drive can be installed. It shows the
current 80GB WD drive. I'd like to replace it with a WD 250GB drive
and use the 80GB drive as a secondary.

How can I found out how big a drive I can use?

Thanks!

There is no easy answer to that question Scott. As manufactures don't
list that unlike they do for max memory a machine can handle. Although a
2002 machine should be able to handle a 250GB hard drive. I've put 320GB
in an 2001 HP before and it worked just fine. Originally it came with
80GB.

If by chance it doesn't, there are a few things you can do.

1) Upgrade your BIOS if available.

2) They used to have small bootstrap programs to fool your BIOS (I don't
know if they still use them today).

3) Buy a modern day controller card if you have a spare slot. Yes it is
okay to have more than one, even if one doesn't have anything connected
to it.

I have the same question myself for two of my Gateway MX6124 laptops
('06 era). They came with 60GB and one I upgraded to 120GB and that is
fine. Although I am thinking about going higher like 160GB or 250GB. I
don't know if they can handle those or not. Anyway keep us updated. :-)

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 4GB SSD 2GB SODIMM
Windows XP Home SP2

Odds are fairly good that a 250GB PATA (that's PATA) drive will work with the
700x BIOS.

If you go the SATA route, for sure you need a SATA controller with its own BIOS,
and whoever makes these controller cards would be damned fools if they did not
handle large capacity drives. After all, that's what SATA is all about these
days... Ben Myers


On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:37:47 -0500, Scott wrote:



BillW50 wrote:

In news:ifhdk.246094$yE1.137955@attbi_s21,
William R. Walsh typed on Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:38:22 GMT:
Hi!

I'm thinking of purchasing a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard
Drive, 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM from www.tigerdirect.com for
my 6-year old Gateway 700x WinXP Pro desktop.

So far so good. :-)

I know I need to deteremine if my BIOS will support a drive this
large.

That won't make a difference--just about every SATA card on the
market has its own onboard BIOS. Your system BIOS will never see or
know about the SATA drive, other than as a possible boot device
provided by an add-in controller card.

I'm also looking at getting a Masscool XWT-PCIE11 Internal SATA,
3-Port PCI Express Card for $19.95.

With a six year old computer, you do not want a PCI Express SATA
card. You need a PCI SATA card, and there are lots of options. I
would recommend choosing one from a reputable vendor like SIIG, or
someone else who has been in business for a while:

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SA1012-S1 would be perfect
for one SATA drive if that's all you plan to add to your computer.

Note that if you are planning to use the new SATA drive to start your
computer, you may well want to install the controller card and its
drivers under your operating system before you migrate your data and
operating system to the new drive. If you don't, you will get a big
surprise because the operating system won't have any drivers to tell
it how the use the new SATA card and drive. (This is also important
if you plan to simply "start fresh" and reinstall everything from
scratch with the new drive.)

If you are just going to use the new drive as additional storage, just
install it and the controller card. You can install the drivers
afterwards.

William

I don't know Scott... I personally rather go with the external USB route
myself. I have many computers and most of them are laptops though. And
careful with TigerDirect. I have dealt with them for many years. They do
have great prices for the most part. Although their coupon system requires
about 4 hours worth of work to complete (this laptop I got from them for
example). Plus they do sell defective junk from time to time as well. The
last example I had when I purchased a Beyond Micro 320GB external USB HD. It
was DOA. And for this item, TigerDirect wouldn't take it back. They said I
had to deal with Beyond Micro instead which I did.

--
Bill
Gateway Celeron M 370 (1.5GHZ)
MX6124 (laptop) w/2GB
Windows XP Home SP2 120GB HD)
Intel(r) 910GML (64MB shared)

Bill,

I looked in the BIOS of my 2002 Gateway 700x desktop and could find no indication
about how large a drive can be installed. It shows the current 80GB WD drive. I'd
like to replace it with a WD 250GB drive and use the 80GB drive as a secondary.

How can I found out how big a drive I can use?

Thanks!
Scott

Hi!

I'm planning to start fresh with the 500GB drive, using it as the main
boot
drive ....installing WinXP

Alrighty--that's not easy or fast as adding storage, but it isn't that much
harder either. Before you go to install Windows, download the drivers for
your new SATA card. You will most likely need them at installation
time--when Windows Setup prompts you to press F6. This is because your new
SATA card will most likely act as an enhanced disk controller (most of them
have built in RAID capability, which could be used to provide fault
tolerance if you have two drives that are the same size and type).

Once you've got that, you will need to inspect the system BIOS setup utility
to see if there is a way to put your new SATA card in the list of things
that the computer will try to start up from. You will need to give it higher
priority than the built in IDE controller on the motherboard.

the WinXP install won't find those drivers, will it?

That is correct. Windows Setup isn't "smart" enough to find them--you've got
to provide them during setup from a floppy diskette.

The old drive will be connected as a slave.

The concept of master and slave does not apply to SATA drives, and you won't
need to change how your current drive is set up. It can remain set as
"master" and should stay that way so as to avoid problems. (Some computers
don't like having the only device connected to the motherboard's IDE ports
set as a slave. Others are fine with it.) For a SATA drive, only one device
connects to each SATA port. The thing to pay attention to is the boot order,
so that you will be sure you are starting up from the SATA drive and
installing Windows to it.

Also: To avoid any disasters or strange behavior, you probably should
disconnect your current hard drive while preparing the new one and
installing Windows. It's an added layer of security to do this--the old
drive can't accidentally be formatted or something like that if it isn't
hooked up.

William