ian_sadler

As above.

XP Pro on to a new SATA drive.

The bios says they are there but XP says no hard drive detected.

Big Col

when the recovery disc boots up its says 'press F6 to install.....' i forget exactly.

At this point press F6 then insert the SATA drivers disc you got with your motherboard. It now should recognise your sata drive and you continue as normal

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

Close enough.

When you first start installing Windows it loads a lot of files to memory, then reboots. It's after this first reboot you see the little message (at the bottom of the screen) saying "Press f6 to load third-party or RAID drivers" or words to that effect. Press f6 as requested. Note: at this point you must have the SATA drivers on a floppy disc - a CD won't work AFAIK 'cos Windows needs to read the install CD. POint Windows at the floppy and Windows will guess the correct drivers. Make sure they're the right version and then OK. Leave the disk there for a while because Windows keeps going back to it. Remove before any reboot.


M

ian_sadler

Thanks guys.

All fine now.

P1Fanatic

Strange as Im currently installing XP on my new build with a SATA HDD. Ive had no such problems - its seen the hdd, formats it and installs windows xp which is now running fine.

There was an option F6 to install 3rd party scsci or raid drivers but it didnt mention SATA.

Do I really need these drives installed for performance issues or is it just so the drives are seen?

Asus A8N-sli mobo and WD Caviar SE SATA 160gb if it makes any diff.

Simon.

kelvin

Is this the case even if you have more than one CD drive?

I have my SATA drivers on CD (home made) as I tend to install them from within Windows once XP is loaded (I run XP off of a regular IDE HD at the moment). Assuming I did want to install onto a SATA drive however, is there anything that would stop me from using my DVD-RW drive in place of a floppy (I don't have one!).

Just curious

K.

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

Is your SATA on an Intel rig? Intel chipset drivers are properly integrated into Windows, but AMD ones are not, which I assume is why you need separate SATA drivers.


M

P1Fanatic

No Im using an AMD Setup. Athlon 64 3200+ and Asus A8N-sli (nforce 4 chipset) mobo.

How do I tell for sure my HDD is running SATA as I havent installed any SATA drivers? Its connected via SATA power and data cables. Cant see any mention of SATA in device mgr nor on Asus Mobo Install Disk....

Simon.

ScoobyNoob

I think it depends on where you plugged the drives in and if you've enabled RAID in the BIOS.

I've got an MSI SLI board, SATA drive plugged into the NVIDIA SATA controller, no problems with XP. Apart form the fact it insists on calling the drive 'D' rather than 'C'. grrr.

Graz

If its plugged into a SATA interface then it has to be running SATA


I think it depends if the SATA interface is attached to a RAID controller or not. If it isn't then it should be like any other hard-disk nad therefore be detected by the BIOS and reported to the XP installer as a normal hard disk.

If it is RAID then you need to install drivers for the RAID controller before you can load XP, hence the press F6 and insert floppy disk bit during XP install.

Thats what I had to do on my ASUS NForce2 Deluxe motherboard (with SATA RAID) anyway.

Nick

If SATA RAID is enabled in the BIOS, you must install the drivers. If it's disbaled in the BIOS, you do not need any drivers.

P1Fanatic

Well I aint using RAID so that will be why Im ok.

Out of curiosity let me see if I get this straight. RAID is basically running two or more physical drives together but as one "virtual drive". By doing this you can increase the data transfer rate as you load one section of data from the 1st drive, and other data from the 2nd at the same time and so on?

Is there really any need to RAID your hard drives other than to say "hey guys me got RAID, big up me" or if your doing extended data transfers? My PC seems to load games fast enough for my liking (always first to join a new map in Counterstrike Source).

Simon.