Originally this PC had a SATA raid plus a pata drive: but it had problems booting… removing the 200MB pata drive fixed the problem.

Now (a few months later) the owner has found some problems with installing some apps (games), and we both agree that its probably time to reinstall windows xp.

He then starts thinking that its about time to upgrade the 2 sata raid (striped) drives (37GB each), so we discuss a few options:

1. Keep the sata raid (reinstall winXP), and also install a sata-ii 250GB drive
2. Remove the sata raid drives and install a sata-ii 250GB drive (with windows)
3. Keep the existing sata raid (reinstall windows), and keep using the 200 GB ‘networked’ drive in his other computer.

My personal preference is to go with option 2

After a few hours research on the web, I cannot find any definite answer to whether a sata-ii drive will work with this MoBo.

Many people say a sata-ii drive will negotiate speed with a normal sata MoBo, others say older sata MoBos are not capable of negotiating, so you need to set a jumper on the drive to force it to ‘talk’ at the slower speed, and others say that this Mobo has so many problems with its disk controllers, that even a normal sata drive can be a problem.

Given all that, it looks like options 1 and 2 are not economically viable. (installing a sata-ii pci controller card is a way around this, but at extra expense.

Customer decides to go for option 3, and upgrade the PC at some point in the future.

Besides the slight inconvenience of having to install the scsi drivers onto a floppy, so that XP will recognise the drives during a reinstallation, everything works well.