I am rebuilding my system with an Asus A8V deluxe motherboard. I was thinking of using one of my current hard drives in an external case for backing up my music collection.(the other would go in the closet as a spare)
I want to buy 2 SATA drives to use in the computer. CompUSA has the Hitachi 160gb SATA drives for $39.95 (after savings and rebate, click HERE). I was thinking of getting two of these. I do not plan on using any raid setups. This would free up the ide channels to use for optical drives only.
I have read different things about booting from sata drives, such as the controller needing drivers installed, etc. This might be a little confusing for me if there are any problems. I am only moderately knowledgeable when it comes to this stuff, and I want everything to go smooth.

If you think this might be a problem then I might go this way:
There is a third ide connector on this mobo that is set up by default as a raid controller but can bet set to run an individual device (non atapi). I would use my old HD on this connector as the boot drive. Get one of the sata drives from CompUSA as an internal backup drive. Use my second current HD in an external enclosure, and use the 2 original ide connectors for my three cd/dvd drives.

Also. I have searched here and other places for a suggestion about a good external enclosure for a HD and there are many different opinions(ie.fan/no fan,internal/external power supply, etc.). I would be getting this from newegg and would like to keep it around $50 or less. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated. I am looking at this one based on a thread here.AMS enclosure. It seems to be what I am looking for but would probably want one that has feet so it can stand on its side.

Thanks for any help or suggestions

Hi
When installing windows it will ask you press F6 to install driver.
Drivers come with motherboard cd of drivers & utilities.
For SATA you'll have two sets, one for IDE the other for Raid. Simply select which you require & put them on a floppy.

You will need a floppy drive to install the driver at set-up. But if the board has a BIOS setting for "normal" mode as opposed to "RAID" mode, you may or may not need a driver. You'll know as soon as Windows tries to install to a HD. (Be sure that the intended HD is the only one connected at the time.)

If you use a slipstream Windows XP-SP2 CD to install, no drive should be needed, but as always, YMMV. I would have a floppy with the non-RAID driver on hand in any case.

The motherboard manual should discuss this very thing in the SATA/RAID section.

I have installed XP Home on three different motherboards using SATA drives and have not needed to install any drivers prior to installing Windows. I can't remember but as long as you have an XP install with service pack 1 or higher it should not be a problem (my discs have SP2 on them). Two of the motherboards I used recognized the hard drive immediately with no bios adjustments. The last one i did was with a Asus A8V-E, which is similar to your board, had to be changed from "raid" to "IDE" in the bios, then I re-booted and it showed up and installed no problem.

OK. I went to CompUSA and only got 1 of the drives. That means I will have 1 SATA drive and 1 IDE drive, which would be connected to the third ide port as mentioned above. Is there any reason why one of these would be better as the boot drive as opposed to the other? Does the increased speed of the sata drive improve boot time?

Also, while reading about sata I've seen that sata is 150 mbps and sata II is 300mbps. Could you tell me the difference between these 2 drives below (other than capacity ) ? I am assuming they are the same as far as sata speed, only described differently by CompUSA

SATA/150

SATA

Thanks

The interface speed is just that, it does not make the drive faster. Unless you are talking about a 10k or 15k RPM drive, they will all perform much the same.
The faster controllers do have other advantages, but a fast controller doesn't make a drive run faster.

Difference between SATA and SATA II is mostly marketing.
You have to look VERY closely as there are some SATA II drives that don't support NCQ, and other SATA II recomended specs.

And as rdgrimes said, those 2 specific drives you mentioned will perform the same for the most part.

Jimmybob, what specifically in your BIOS had to be "changed from RAID to IDE"?