"Diamontina Cocktail" <lrb@australia.com> wrote in message
news:OBUsbmpUHHA.1364@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...[color=blue]
>I don't normally use ATA as anything other than backup purely because C
>drive has always been an IDE on this machine and I am not really wanting to
>muck about with that for it. After all it isn't an expensive motherboard so
>I am waiting till later this year before I replace it.
>
> Anyway, in the meantime, I needed more backup space so put an ATA in as a
> backup drive only and what do you know, the minute it does, the IDE drives
> go haywire, wanting to be installed all the time AS ATA drives. I got sick
> of this, disconnected the ATA drive (the only 1) and then turned ATA off
> in BIOS but still the ****ed IDE drives were playing up. I attempted to
> make them show up as normal IDE drives by reinstalling the drivers but it
> only resulted in both drives not being available to the system and Vista
> refusing to boot. So I did a restore from image backup to a day ago and
> still without the ATA drive attached and ATA being disabled in bios, when
> it came back to Windows, it shows the IDE drives as their model name and
> "ATA device" when they are IDE.
>
> So, does anyone have any idea how to make the drives KNOW that they are
> IDE again please? Thanks.
>[/color]

[url]http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/pcinfo/hardware/atafaq/atafq2.htm#ss2.2[/url]
"2.2 IDE and ATA
IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics--or numerous other interpretations) and
ATA (AT Attachment) are one and the same thing: a disk drive implementation
designed to integrate the controller onto the drive itself, thereby reducing
interface costs, and making firmware implementations easier. This low
cost/easy integration created a boom in the disk drive industry, as PC
integrators readily ate up the low-cost alternative. Since the late 80's,
ATA (as it is properly called) has become the drive of choice for the cost
inhibited buyer."

Maybe you shouldn't disable ATA in the BIOS.



John.