Quick SATA and IDE Question

[nV`andrew]

I'm building a family computer right now, and I haven't touched IDE in a few years so I want to make sure I am doing this right.

I have a 500GB SATA hard drive that I want as the primary drive. There is nothing on it, which is where I will be loading windows.

I also have an ancient IDE 80GB drive that has some files my dad still wants. I somehow forgot to order a SATA DVD drive, so I'm using an IDE DVD drive. The jumpers on the DVD drive are set to slave.

So, if the IDE hard drive is the master, and the dvd rom the slave, will the SATA hard drive still be able to be the number 1, errr C:// drive? (or am I being REALLY dumb and this can be arranged in the BIOS? (yes i know you can change the boot order :p))

[Redeemed]

Well, by default they're organized with IDE drives first, SATA drives afterwards. You can most certainly install the OS to the SATA HDD, and it'll still show up as C:\. The OS designates the drive letters, not the BIOS. As such, typically the boot drive will be your C:\ drive. Additional hard drives come next, with optical drives after that.

[nV`andrew]

Thanks, I figured it was that simple but just wanted to clarify on how it would come up. Got it all built, gonna boot it up tomorrow :)

[frenchy2k1]

For safety, I would install windows with the SATA drive alone
I've heard reports of people trying to install on one drive and windows still placing files on the other anyway. I do not know how true that is, but for safety, i'd just install with the SATA alone and plug the other one after i'm done.