In a computer system, many people use SATA or RAID disks that act as an interface between host adapters and storage devices. When a user is using SATA drives on systems based on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 then he usually expects that disk drives and SATA channels have same numbers. This means that a disk drive must correspond to a SATA drive with the similar number. However, unlike the expectations of users this does not happen at all. Instead of this, disk drives can correspond to different SATA channel numbers and due to this problem, you may face difficulty in setting up windows.
Why this problem occurs
In a system, there is no assurance that the disk drive number corresponds correctly to SATA or RAID drives if they are available in large numbers. This happens because when a system is start up the different devices available are made available in an arbitrary sequence. The sequence in which the devices occur may depend on the sequence in which they are enumerated. Thus, you may encounter devices being assigned different sequence numbers during different startups. To understand this concept in a better way, you can consider your system to have two different SATA drives with designation SATA 0 and SATA 1. Now you may expect Disc 0 to correspond to SATA 0 but it is possible that this does not happen. Many people in order to match the disk drive number with SATA drive, set up Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 at wrong disk drive. By doing this you can end up losing many important data in your system that is not at all desirable.
How to deal with the problem
Firstly, you should know that this problem do not occur with everyone. However, if it happens to you then do not worry at all. To deal with this problem you just need to be careful while choosing the drive for setup of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. When the selection has to be done for the drive, you must select the drive by verifying its name. In addition to it, you can check for the available free space as it is a good indicator to check whether you are setting up Windows in the right drive or not.
In some cases, users do not face this problem during the set up of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. However, they may encounter this problem either when you install Windows or when you perform some recovery task in the system.
If you own a system that have multiple SATA or RAID drives then you may come across situations where the disk drive numbers do not match with SATA drive number. It would be better if you do not forcefully try to match the numbers as it may result in loss of important data from the system. You can efficiently deal with such problems by carefully choosing the right type of drive.
