Question about installing additional SATA hdd's

[Fred Forsythe]

I have a recently built pc, using an Asus P5B Deluxe mobo. I had initially installed 2 new 320 gig hdd's, along with a 120 gig & a 160 gig ide drive, which I had previously. I have just added 2 500 gig satas. They are installed & operating, but I am windering if I have picked the best configuration. I am not using RAID at the moment; all are basically IDE configurations. 1 of the 320's is master, containing the main XP os, the other is slave. These are on SATA ports 1 & 3, respectively. I will probably install a 2nd os on a partition of this slave 320. One of the new 500 sata's is installed on SATA port 2 as master, the other is on SATA 4, as slave. These will likely only be used as storage. I am wondering if the master/slave allocation is appropriate. the MOBO offers 4 MASTER ports, & 2 SLAVES, which would seem to indicate MASTER is superior, even for just a storage disk. Any clarification appreciated.

TIA

Fred

[azzey]

Okay... I'm not sure I understand the configuration ;)

Could you make a neat list of all the drives you have, their spindle speed, and their interface (SATA/PATA)? I think that will clear up any confusion...

SATA doesn't use master/slave configurations. If it shows up in the BIOS that way, it's for legacy support. It doesn't make a difference at all. Are the new 500GB drives meant for storage?

[Fred Forsythe]

Azzey-Sorry for the confusion. I believe all drives are 7200 rpm, I know the SATA's all are.

To clarify, MOBO has 6 SATA ports, Manual says by default they are "set to standard IDE mode". None of the SATA's are raided at the moment. Manual says ports 1, 2, 5 & 6 are set as "masters", ports 3 & 4 are set as "slaves".

Drives are as follows:

1) Primary OS on 320 gig SATA drive, Seagate 3320620AS, connected to MOBO SATA port 1 as master.
2) 2nd 320 gig SATA drive, Seagate 3320620AS, connected to MOBO SATA port 3 as slave. Used as storage, but I will install a 2nd XP on a partition here.
3) New 500 gig SATA drive, Seagate 3500641AS, on MOBO SATA port 2 for storage. Mobo manual says this is a "master" port.
4) New 500 gig SATA drive, Seagate 3500641AS, #2 on MOBO SATA port 4 for storage. Mobo manual says this is a "slave" port.

In addition, I have 2 older PATA drives used as storage, both WD's, a 120 gig & a 160 gig. One is slave to the CD burner, the other is on a PCI IDE card as by itself.

Hope this clears things up. My question is, until I set up some reaid config with the 4 sata's, how should each be connected at the mobo, slave, or master? As it is I can access all drives fine. Don't know if the slave/master thing matters beyond that, but it so I'd like to had the connections config'd to best advantage. I'm sure they should be raided somehow, which is why got identical pairs, but I haven't had a chance to get up to speed on that yet.

Thanks for your reply.

Fred