Help with SATA drive

[meyou123]

OK, a few years ago, I purchased a 40 gig Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive for my computer. I used it for a few months, but eventually ended up switching back to a regular Western Digital IDE hard drive, as windows xp does not natively support SATA drives. Now I am going to get a PCI controller card for the SATA drive and just use the drive itself as an extra storage drive.
The one problem I have, is that I still have a previous version of win xp on there, as it was my main drive a few years ago. Here is my question.....

Would it be easier for me to physically unhook my current Western Digital IDE drive and just reformat the SATA first? If I don't then there will be two different types of drives with TWO win xp pro opertaing systems on them at the same time! Is this the best way to reformat the SATA drive so that I can use it for storage?

Also, yes i know that there are SATA controllers on my motherboard, but I would rather use a controller card because it comes with its own drivers. The SATA drivers I got on the net for my motherboard were not that good.

Here are my specs:
System Specs: ATX generic case with Antec 550 watt power supply. ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe Motherboard. Western Digital 7,200 RPM 40 gig IDE Hard Drive.(NTFS- file system) AMD Athlon XP 2600 processor.(standard fan and heatsink-Thoroughbred Core-standard speed-NO OVERCLOCK) 1 gig of Samsung DDRAM(PC 2700- 333 mhz....2-512mb sticks running in dual channel mode).Ati Radeon 8x 9600 XT (8x is enabled on motherboard). Soundblaster Audigy 2 sound card. Motorola sb 5100 cable modem (Insight Communications-Cable Connection) Sony DRU 500 AX DVD- RECORDER.(records -R/-RW or +R/+RW and CD-R formats-4x-24x-4x) Sony 52x32x52 CD Burner. Zip 100 internal drive and a generic 3.5 floppy drive. Windows XP Professional Operating System. I also have a HP Deskjet 3520 inkjet printer and a KDS X Flat 17 inch CRT monitor.

[mountain_rage]

Unless im mistaken the only company that makes a true sata harddrive is seagate. So basically your sata drive is just a ide drive with a sata conversion done at the factory. Not a big issue but you wont get the same advantage as a true sata. As for your problem from my understanding you have 2 harddrives each with its own version of xp. Now unless im mistaken here you have each installed without the other detected so there is no dual boot on your harddrive. So if this is the casse you should just be able to format it even with the other harddrive still in. Just dont boot to your old drive and just format it. Im not sure i get your problem but I tried.

[Krell]

I think you read disparity where there is none.

Hook up your SATA drive, and then try to boot. Either it will, or wont.


First:

Install the controller card and drivers, then attach the SATA drive and try to boot.

If it does install, then Right click My Computer, and then MANAGE.

You can format your SATA drive from there.

.

[meyou123]

Thanks Krell.