[murph]

First off, hey there! Hope you can help me with this!

Firstly, I’m not exactly great with installing new parts on computers etc. But I do have a half decent knowledge of computers in general, and I’m always ready to get stuck in and try something out. I recently installed some new RAM on my PC, as 512mb wasnt enough to run the music sequencers i use properly. Upgraded that to 2 gig and all is well!

The next thing to tackle was the hard drive space. I had the computer built by someone I knew, and seeing as I was saving money at the time, I only had a 60gig master and 20-gig slave put in. These are nowhere near big enough seeing as I’m doing so much music work, using large amounts of .wav files etc.

So I checked on the box of the motherboard (ASRock P4VM890), and it said 2 x Serial ATA 1.5 Gb/s connectors. This made me (foolishly) assume the two drives in my computer were SATA I drives. I read online and found that SATA II drives would still work but just operate at the SATA I speed. So I ordered a 500 gig SATA II drive and yesterday I opened up my computer to discover the drives in there are EIDE hard drives because the cables were completely different to what would fit the drive I had bought! <Gutted.

So I came to the conclusion it obviously supports both. My plan was to keep the operating system and music software programs on the 60 Gig master that's in there, and keep it as that. Then have all of my recording sessions kept on the 500 Gig SATA as a slave.

So after allllllll that rambling on here's my question... Is it possible for me to keep the 60 gig as the master drive without taking anything off of there (most importantly windows XP, as I don't have the disk), and hook up my new 500 gig as a slave drive, and just keep the 20 gig in a box for a spare or whatever?
Also, would running my projects from the slave drive cause any reduction in speed or is this not an issue?

Hope you can help! (And sorry about the essay, I just wanted to make sure you could tell I’m not that great with computers)

Thanks. Chris.

[philthomas]

Originally Posted by murph

... Is it possible for me to keep the 60 gig as the master drive without taking anything off of there (most importantly windows XP, as I don't have the disk),

Yes

and hook up my new 500 gig as a slave drive, and just keep the 20 gig in a box for a spare or whatever?

Yes .... although with SATA drives there are no Masters or Slaves

Also, would running my projects from the slave drive cause any reduction in speed or is this not an issue?

It wouldn't be an issue .... speed will be just fine

HTH