Need some help converting old machine for SATA HD

Greetings,
A family member asked me to convert a HP Proliant ML110 IDE version computer to use a SATA drive, and then reload windows 7 on the new drive. This computer was in his office however the hardrive went bad, and secondly he no longer uses the software that the server was placed in the office to share. So he wanted to convert it to something he could use at home to store movies and music and such to share with his home network. Plan is to put in SATA 500 gb seagate drive, and load windows 7, fresh install.

First this machine is a Intel with 2 IDE slots, but no SATA so using a BT-PSAPA controller card from bytecc. So the real issue I seem to have is I cannot get machine to actually boot from CD-Rom, I do have it set up in bios to go Cd-Rom, hardrive, floppy. I have not used a SATA card, can it be used and have the SATA drive be the boot device.
Another issue I have is only HD I had sitting out says the license has run out for windows(when I originally booted on it said 3 days to change, I did this, then cloned drive to SATA, and loaded windows 7), I removed the harddrive from another machine and replaced it with SATA drive, so I could not get into windows and load drivers and see if windows sees the new hardrive.

I know the cd-rom works, I did get to windows safe mode with command prompt, and it loaded raid drivers, and drivers for wireless network card.

thanks for any help

 

Well seems it was issue with the Cd-rom, I switched out a spare dvd-cd-rom I had and it booted up to loading windows screen. Issue could also be the new windows is on DVD and this server only has cd-rom.....
So for now got past the main issue. Now just need to see if I can use the SATA drive, or if I need to use the other 500 gb IDE.

 

Why do you want to use a SATA on a board with only IDE? Even if you can get the board to think the SATA is IDE, you will see no performance gain. Seems like a a problem you don't need.

Also I don't believe you can clone a IDE to SATA, the MBR is different (the clone likely appeared to have completed correctly), so clean install was the only option.

Lastly even if the licence expires on windows 7 you can still get in and input the key.

 

First off there wsa two machines I worked on, the one you refer to has been completed after cloning it, I booted from the SATA with the new motherboard and it worked fine, then I installed windows 7 again worked fine, and yes I ended up having to do customer install but it was my first install of windows 7. I did use easy transfer first and move all the old profile and such and broguht them back and booted off the computer several times so works fine. Therefore that part is done.

However the coputer I am working with now is the HP proliant server, which was an IDE Model, there are three, SCSI, IDE, and SATA. Now the problem I had was that the original HD was dead, my cousin supplied a new Seagate SATA and wanted to use that instead and boot from it. Keep in mind he is not using it as a server anymore. At the moment the new SATA does not show up in bios, and now hat I can boot from CD-rom, it is not seen by windows either, now I have a spare HD, the 500 GB WD, i replaced from the first computer I can install windows on this one, although I am using XP, as windows 7 boots up and says starting windows but never goes beyond this point, while XP I can get it to install menu. I was thinking I could setup windows on the IDE, and then try getting it to see the PCI SATA card, the BT-PSAPA.

So first question I have will I be able to boot directly from the SATA drive if plugged into the PCI card, or will this not work?

My experience with SATA drives has been using them with motherboards with built in controllers, this is the first time I tried to use a PCI controller instead, it came with drivers but I believe this is for RAID, and I do not plan to use it that way.

 

You need for a PCI card that either supports IDE or AHCI, I would assume any card offering Raid also offers this. It and should be a simple plug and play, you may need to access the PCI card outside of bios at boot (instructions for key sequence) and set-up the correct function. This would allow the drive to be seen by the bios, their should be instructions that came with the card that indicate how to install and set it up.

Once bios sees the SATA drive, then windows 7 will have no problem as it has native SATA support, this would make sense why only raid drivers were supplied.