So I was looking for an antenna cable in my cellar, when I found some old sweets in a by my old computer in a cardboard box. Two old PATA HDDs, a PATA CD-ROM and some IDE cables. That gave me an idea of installing one of the HDDs and the CD-ROM to my new desktop and install Linux on one of the drives (for dual booting). My motherboard is of the newer type, and has 6 SATA connectors, but only one IDE connector. The connector was labeled "PRI IDE". Does this mean that the device connected to it will be the primary drive? Why would it be labeled "PRI IDE" if there's only one IDE connector on the motherboard? I already have two SATA HDDs and one SATA CD-ROM/burner installed in my computer. Will a third one slow down the system?
Also, the IDE connector on the motherboard and the PATA HDD is mounted at the bottom of the computer's housing, but the PATA CD-ROM is mounted at the top. The IDE cable has 3 connectors. The one in the middle is nearer the connector on the right than the connector on the left. I've read somewhere that the connector that is farthest away from the connector in the middle should be connected to the motherboard. Does it really matter which connector that is connected to the motherboard? Can I connect the connector that is farthest away from the middle to the CD-ROM and connect the two other connectors to the motherboard and the HDD?
What does the IDE connector labeled PRI IDE on the motherboard do
hard drivemulti-bootpata
Related Solutions
I ended up Frankensteining two computers together. I put a PCI PATA card in the new machine for the data connection and got power from a different computer. Ugly.
You can tell by looking in your OS' device list. If the device is attached to an IDE channel, it's not running in AHCI mode.
Enhanced/SATA allows you to map SATA devices to IDE, so operating systems without AHCI support can still make use of the disks. SATA+PATA usually means that SATA is mapped to primary IDE, while PATA is mapped to secondary IDE (in different possible combinations, eg. physical primary master/slave to logical secondary master/slave, or physical primary/secondary master to logical secondary master/slave).
- Choose Enhanced mode / PATA if you have an IDE device you'd like to support
- Choose Compatible mode if you have an IDE device and enhanced mode doesn't work with your OS
- Choose Enhanced mode with SATA if you have SATA devices that your OS can't find (plain SATA if you have no IDE devices attached, SATA+PATA if you have SATA and IDE)
- Choose Disabled if you have no IDE devices and SATA devices work properly in AHCI mode
It's also possible that the chipset on your board does not support AHCI, Intel is somewhat sadistic about that (they even have different revisions of the same chip, with the same name, with AHCI enabled and disabled!). And even if the chipset supports AHCI, the BIOS can disable it!
In either case, the SATA ports will always be provided with an "IDE" interface, and this configuration option above is only relevant in rare cornercases (very old operating system that supports only 4 IDE devices in total), where you have to "stuff together" IDE and SATA to let the OS access all devices through 2 IDE controllers ("primary" and "secondary").
Best Answer
"PRI IDE" means it will be primary on the IDE bus. It shouldn't harm your SATA bus at all. You can choose which boots first in the BIOS.
Historically, there were a lot of games played with IDE in the early days where you had to set slaves and masters and a bunch of crazy nonsense. Long and short of it is with modern BIOS, plug it in and use the the BIOS to tell what should boot first.
Can't answer the power question without more info, but in all likelyhood it should be okay.