# BIOS: SATA Drive Settings & Configurations



## basstrx (Apr 14, 2009)

Hi everyone, I will give as much detail as I can.

I have a Dell XPS 400 (Dimension 9150) PC, I found in the trash and it was intact. All I did was put memory in it and a new Power Supply. I was not familiar with SATA drives, and this is the first time dealing with them.

It has only 1 drive, which is a 250GB drive, and it was partitioned from what I could tell with 3 partitions. One I think held the System Restore service containing Windows Media Center Edition, and then there were 2 more. I deleted all the partitions, chose the [RAID AUTODETECT/ATA] choice in the BIOS screen (shown below), and then installed XP Pro from my own cd.

This SATA hard drive is on -Drive 0 Sata 0 ID 0-, and there is a DVD Burner on a regular IDE cable. I have been researching this topic, I understand the idea behind RAID configs, but I am only dealing with this 1 drive and am not going to add any more. There are also card readers installed/enabled on the front of the pc.

At 1st when I tried to install XP it would not show any drive, and then crashed. But I was able to install it after changing the Config to the RAID AUTODETECT/ATA choice (by chance) and all is good, except what should be Drive C: is Drive H:, the card readers are labled from C-F, and the DVD Drive is DRIVE G:

[I want to do a final reinstall knowing I did it the right way]


SO HERE IS MY QUESTION: what setting choice below should I choose?


In the BIOS screen, under the DRIVES setting, there is a SATA Operation selection setting.
It looks like this:


[DRIVES]
-Diskette Drive
-DRIVE 0: SATA-0
-DRIVE 1: SATA-1
-DRIVE 2: SATA-2
-DRIVE 3: SATA-3
-DRIVE 4: PATA-0
-DRIVE 5: PATA-1
-SATA OPERATION


You can choose one of these 4 selection settings:


[RAID AUTODETECT/AHCI] - RAID IF SIGNED DRIVES, OTHERWISE AHCI
[RAID AUTODETECT/ATA] - RAID IF SIGNED DRIVES, OTHERWISE ATA
[RAID ON] - SATA IS CONFIGURED FOR RAID ON EVERY BOOT
[COMBINATION] - SATA/PATA COMBINATION MODE


And these 3 info notes are below that on the screen:


*This field configures the operating mode of the integrated hard drive controller.
*The Factory default setting is RAID AUTODETECT/AHCI
*Note that changing to or from COMBINATION MODE will change how the drives are listed. The information for the drives will not reflect these changes until after a reboot.


THANKS.


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## Old Rich (May 31, 2007)

Use [COMBINATION] - SATA/PATA COMBINATION MODE

If you have the Dell System restore ( not all Dells do ) you can use that and you will not need a install CD

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=181316

If not, You can get a reinstallation guide specific to your Dell here

Either disconnect the flash card readers or disable them in BIOS and the drive letter problem goes away


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## basstrx (Apr 14, 2009)

OK Kind Person, thankyou Very Much. That's all I wanted to know.

Thanks. !


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## Old Rich (May 31, 2007)

Let us know how it goes . .


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