# SATA PC, IDE Hard Drive, WinMFS: ???



## granpoh (Aug 12, 2007)

I don't understand how to set my PC up for WinMFS. My Tivo hard drives are IDE, yet my PC hard drive is SATA. My PC seems to have all Sata connections except for one IDE port on the motherboard. I don't see any guide that tells me specifically what to do about this. How do I connect everything to my PC without messing anything up? 

Thanks for all help


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## bengalfreak (Oct 20, 2002)

I struggled with this earlier this year. What it depends on is if the CDROM drive in your PC is SATA or IDE. If its SATA, no problem, just hook up your Tivo drive to the IDE connector and jumper it as primary master.

If your CDROM drive is IDE, like mine was, it gets a bit more complicated. The CDROM is most likely the only IDE device in the system so it is jumpered as primary master. And no matter what I did, I couldn't get WinMFS, or MFSTools for that matter, to work with the CDROM setup as primary master and my tivo drive jumpered as primary slave. I had to pull the CDROM drive and set the jumper to slave, put it back in and jumper my Tivo drive as master. Then, it finally worked.

What might be easier, is just to buy a SATA drive and use a SATA to USB adapter when putting it in your Tivo. Just make sure you check the thread in this forum to find adapters that work, for sure, in Tivos. That's what I am going to do the next time i have a hard disk failure.


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## granpoh (Aug 12, 2007)

bengalfreak said:


> I struggled with this earlier this year. What it depends on is if the CDROM drive in your PC is SATA or IDE. If its SATA, no problem, just hook up your Tivo drive to the IDE connector and jumper it as primary master.


My CD-Rom is SATA. So, you're saying that I need to connect my Tivo hard drive to the IDE port on my motherboard and move the jumper to the primary master position? But, isn't the main C: drive already the master hard drive? Is there any possibility that I could mess the C: drive up in the process? I mean, is there anything that I should do as a precaution against that? I'm moving really carefully here, because I don't want to botch my whole PC up, you know.

Thanks for all help


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

It should be OK. Setting the jumper on the drive to master doesn't mean that your PC will assume that it's the *primary* master.

Another option is a USB to SATA/IDE adapter. I picked up a Vantec CB-ISATAU2 for about $25 several months back just to have it handy, and recently used it with WinMFS. I didn't even have to reboot or crack the case on my PC - easiest TiVo upgrade ever.


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## granpoh (Aug 12, 2007)

ggieseke said:


> It should be OK. Setting the jumper on the drive to master doesn't mean that your PC will assume that it's the *primary* master.
> 
> Another option is a USB to SATA/IDE adapter. I picked up a Vantec CB-ISATAU2 for about $25 several months back just to have it handy, and recently used it with WinMFS. I didn't even have to reboot or crack the case on my PC - easiest TiVo upgrade ever.


Thanks a lot! I took your advice and purchased the Vantec CB-ISATAU2 and I must say, it was a piece of cake. All done!


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