"Geoff Cox" <gcox@freeuk.notcom> wrote in message
news:t37174dfath300hrgjr6uu0k9f7h4a50f8@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:33:29 -0400, Paul <nospam@needed.com> wrote:
>
>>The C: drive is not related to the SATA port. Your C: could be
>>connected to SATA 0 or to SATA 1. Perhaps looking at the drive
>>serial number in the BIOS, or with a utility, and looking for a
>>sticker on the outside of the drive, with the same information,
>
> Paul,
>
> I couldn't find any ref to hard disk serial numbers in the BIOS but
> there was this info.
>
> IDE Channel 0 Master -[ the DVDRW]
> IDE Channel 0 Slave - [the DVD]
>
> IDE Channel 1 Master - [S_ATA1-Hitachi etc]
> IDE Channel 1 Slave - [S_ATA2-Hitachi etc]
>
> (NB the S_ATA1 and S_ATA2 above)
>
> also
>
> x SATA Port 0 configure as IDE Sec. Master
> SATA Port 1 configure as IDE Sec. Slave
>
> Looking inside the PC case I can see that
>
> SATA0 socket is connected to the top hard disk and
> SATA1 socket is connected to the bottom hard disk
>
> Does above tell you whether the top hard disk is the C: drive?
>
> Cheers
>
> Geoff

The common convention is that Drive 0 connects to the lowest
numbered SATA connector, but it's no guarantee. You've
already determined that your boot drive, C:, is Drive 0.

Something in you original post that puzzles me, is that you
said booting off D: made the files inaccessible. If a bootable
drive is not present, the BIOS boot process should give you
an error message and suspend. If you do have boot files on
D:, the best thing to do is rename them so that if the system
does try to boot from D: it will give files not found errors and
halt the boot process, therefore no harm done, and you know
which HD is C:.