Moving Windows from IDE to SATA

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 9:54 pm

Well, I've decided my Christmas present to myself would be to upgrade my system to a dual core 64 bit system. Because of the cost I've also decided to do it in stages by getting a couple of parts each month, then build it once I have all the pieces.

Since my current motherboard supports SATA drives I decided I'd start with that and move Windows and my data to them so I can begin using them now.

I got the drives and had no problem using a bootable CD with Acronis True Image on it to transfer everything from the IDE to the SATA drives, but when I tried to boot Windows (XP Home) from the SATA drive I got a BSOD within ten seconds of the loading screen appearing.

Since SATA drives appear as SCSI drives, I suspect that the BSOD came up because Windows isn't loading any drivers for the SATA drives.

So...

Has anyone done this already and know what I need to do to get the drivers into Windows so it can boot from the SATA drive?

(This is my first experience with SATA)

Thanks! (In advance)

Mistrel · Post by **Mistrel** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:27 pm

Unless your motherboard supports IDE emulation for its SATA controller you will not be able to use a SATA drive as your primary hard drive unless you make some extra effort

If you plan on formatting know that the Windows XP setup does not natively support SATA. The only way to get it to recognize your primary drive during installation is to slipstream the drivers onto your disc using a tool like nLite.

You may be able to make it work by installing all of the SATA drivers first. I wouldn't even try without doing this.

I've only tested this with a Windows XP Sp1 cd. Can anyone confirm if this is a problem with Sp2 cds? Hopefully Sp3 cds will have an update for this.

Post by **Berikco** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:47 pm

I have done this many times already for work, and do this also with my computer at home.

You first need to add the exact chipset and SATA chip from your new motherboard to the old, and install the drivers. of course this is not possible.

The way i do it is by using an PCI SATA add on card from Promise SATA 300 TX4, sells for € 45

first install this card in old system with the new Sata drive, XP recognizes it and asks for the drivers to be installed.
Now clone disks and install card and HD in the new system, it will boot now, and find a lot of new hardware, install all requested drivers (sometimes you have to reactivate XP)
Now the chipset and SATA drivers from the new system are in XP, just connect the drive to the mainboards controller and it boots.

Works like a charm

You can also do this with a SCSI controller and SCSI disk, but you will have to clone extra from IDE to SCSI and SCSI to SATA.

Post by **Berikco** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:51 pm

Mistrel wrote:Unless your motherboard supports IDE emulation for its SATA controller you will not be able to use a SATA drive as your primary hard drive unless you make some extra effort

If you plan on formatting know that the Windows XP setup does not natively support SATA. The only way to get it to recognize your primary drive during installation is to slipstream the drivers onto your disc using a tool like nLite.

You may be able to make it work by installing all of the SATA drivers first. I wouldn't even try without doing this.

I've only tested this with a Windows XP Sp1 cd. Can anyone confirm if this is a problem with Sp2 cds? Hopefully Sp3 cds will have an update for this
.

XP does support almost every normal SATA controller, no need to slipstream drivers. There is no software difference between SATA drivers and IDE drivers, the programming interface is the same.
Only the SATA controllers with RAID options need to be added, like SCSI controllers.
You can just have it ready on FDD and press F6 when XP setup starts, you will have the change to add the drivers from diskette.

But NLite is a great tool if you wanna slipstream drivers and service packs

We use it on all windows servers versions 2003 and SBS, coz the new servers have no more FDD controller

Edit: forgot to mention that about all new SATA controllers now have RAID1, so extra drivers are needed

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:54 pm

Yup, just found this on Acronis' web site.

Because Windows XP does not natively include SATA drivers, when you attempt to boot from the new, cloned SATA hard drive, you'll discover that Windows XP will not load. To prevent this, be sure to enable the SATA controller in the BIOS and load the drivers into Windows before cloning.

This is something I didn't do...

Right now I'm just changing drives so simply enabling the SATA controller so Windows can load the drivers is all I need to do, then reclone the drives.

But, thanks for the tip about the the motherboard switch, I will be needing that eventually. Looks like I'll need to get an SATA card to do this upgrade, but from the way it sounds, it might be useful to have for the next upgrade.

Post by **Berikco** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:01 pm

I have my C: drive permanently on the extra SATA card, so easy to transfer to another board

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:06 pm

I don't very often do major system upgrades (last one was over three years ago) so if I have to load drivers to do an upgrade, its not a big deal so I'll use the extra SATA card to get Windows running on the new motherboard, then switch to the onboard SATA.

oldBear · Post by **oldBear** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:31 pm

I've not had good experiences moving true image backups from ide to sata drives.

That said, since you're planning on a rather major upgrade (including new processor and MB?), you may well end up rebuilding the os anyway (I would - new hal, etc), so you might be better off to just wait on the os part untill after you get the hardware in place.

Good luck with the new system.

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:10 am

You could be right, but I'll give it a go without doing a rebuild Windows. Yuck!

And yeah, this is a major upgrade!

Current system:

Athlon XP 3200+
ABit AN7 nForce2 Ultra
2 GB RAM DDR 400
GeForce 7800GS 256 MB VRAM
80 GB & 160 GB Seagate Barracuda IDE hard drives

New system:

Athlon 64 X2 6000+
ABit AN68SD nForce 520D if available, else ABit AN52 nForce 520
3 GB RAM DDR2 800
GeForce 8800GT 512 MB VRAM or 8800GTS 640 MB VRAM which ever is faster
As it turns out the GT is a bit fast but that may only be because its base clock rate is faster
2 160 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA hard drives

What could be a real challenge is finding a video board that isn't over clocked by the manufacturer. Most manufacturers these days seem to be configuring their video cards over clocked but still only using stock heat sinks and fans so they have heat disipation problems. Been seeing lots of complaints about these cards running very hot and burning out after a short while. I hope I can find one thats configured to run at designed speeds and not over clocked.

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:12 am

I decided that since I now know that the new SATA drives work, I'll just wait until I build the new system to do the transfer, that way I won't need the extra SATA controller.

Thnaks for the advise!

radar · Post by **radar** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:56 am

I did exactly that. I moved from IDE to SATA. I used the same theory as moving a physical machine to virtual. Windows loves to remember IDE business, and you need to turn it into a generic system before you transfer it.
I got the idea from the VirtualBox site on how to migrate Windows to a virtual machine.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows
In particular I used the mergeIDE.zip file.
Of course you have to apply this before you take your acronis image.

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:41 pm

Yup, when I ready to switch hardware I plan to:

Do a full system backup
Uninstall the current motherboard and video card drivers (making it generic)
Build the new system
Install the new motherboard and video card drivers with the SATA controller enabled but no drives connected
Transfer Windows to the SATA drive
Cross my fingers and attempt to boot Windows from the SATA drive

For the motherboard, the major difference between the AN68SD and the AN52 is the CPU socket, the AN68SD supports both AM2 and AM2+ while the AN52 only supports AM2, not sure if that's a big enough difference to worry about.

The reason I won't connect the SATA drives is because a friend of mine did that to transfer Windows and Windows assigned a drive letter above C. When the transfer was done and the new drive connected to be the boot device, it still had the previously assigned drive letter and no matter what he did he could not reassign it to C. He ended up using that drive for data and kept Windows on the drive he had originally intended on replacing. So I figure the best way to avoid that happening to me is to not allow Windows to see the new drive until I boot from it. Which is what I've always done anyway.

For the graphics card, it turns out that the 8800GT is a bit faster than the 8800GTS but that could be becasue the 8800GT is designed to run at 600 MHz while the 8800GTS is designed to run at 500 MHz so that may just boil down to price and availability (esspecially of non-over clocked designs, so far all the 8800 GT cards I've looked at are over clocked but I have found a couple of 8800GTS cards that aren't). I don't believe in over clocking, so I will not buy an over clocked design.

Post by **Berikco** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:55 pm

Tipperton wrote: The reason I won't connect the SATA drives is because a friend of mine did that to transfer Windows and Windows assigned a drive letter above C. When the transfer was done and the new drive connected to be the boot device, it still had the previously assigned drive letter and no matter what he did he could not reassign it to C.

This is indeed something XP does.
Only adding the sata card in the old system and no sata drives is the best to install the drivers in XP.
Just connect the drives for cloning but under no circumstances let XP boot

Tipperton · Post by **Tipperton** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:25 pm

Berikco wrote:Only adding the sata card in the old system and no sata drives is the best to install the drivers in XP.

First boot on the new system will be with the IDE drives, the SATA controller will be enabled so XP can install the drivers, but no drives will be connected.

Berikco wrote:Just connect the drives for cloning but under no circumstances let XP boot

For cloning I'll use Acronis True Image from a bootable CD which uses something called BusyBox which looks like a very stripped down linux.

Once the IDE drives are cloned to the SATA drives, the IDE drives will be completely removed from the system and the SATA drives set up as the only hard drives.

That should keep XP well behaved as far as drive letter are concerned.

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:53 pm

I always smile when people talk about 'rebuilding'. Cases are so cheap these days that I'd rather buy an additonal case so that I in case of emergency could have both machines next to each other.