Installing Win XP on a SATA Drive
 

I just built a new machine for my office consisting of :
Asus A8V-X Socket 939 motherboard
Athlon X2 4200
1 x 1Gb RAM
My old GeForce3 graphics card

The board is capable of SATA2, so I bought a SATA2 HDD for it. I haven't
been able to get Windows to install to the SATA drive, so eventually gave
up and used an IDE instead.
I used the files on the CD that came with the motherboard to make a boot
disk with the SATA/RAID driver on it, hit F6 when Windows was installing
and specified third-party driver, like I did with my SATA2 setup at home
which gave me no problems. However, Windows refused to install on this
disk. Now, the SATA drive is still in the PC but is not showing up in
the drives list. Is there a way to retro-fit the drivers and then possibly
transfer everything from the IDE drive to the SATA drive ?

If you go into Drive manager in XP (You can access the Disk Management tool easily from any Admin-level account. Click "Start/Control Panel/Performance" and "Maintenance/Administrative Tools/Computer Management." When the Computer Management interface opens, look in the left-hand pane under "Storage" and click on "Disk Management." ). Then you should be able to partition/add/remove drives in there, drives manager will see drives installed on the machine, but until they are added and assign a drive letter, Explorer etc won't see them - However, given you loaded the SATA drivers first, it sounds strange that XP didn't see the drive - So maybe the actual drive is faulty?

As for transferring data between drives, many manufacturers offer a free download to enable you to do just this - Check the website of you new, or old, drive manufacturer - For example, the Maxtor software is called "Max Blast" and it copies the entire contents from one drive to the other, on a sector by sector basis, so you don't miss anything (if you tried to do this in windows, you wouldn't get the bootsector etc)

So, in summary I would :

-Check the cables to the SATA drive are fitted correctly
-Go into drives manager and see if I can see the drive in there, if so assign a drive letter etc.
-If drive manager can't see the drive - try sticking another SATA drive in to see if the drive is faulty
-Go to the website of the new drives' manufacturer, download thier copy tool

i take it you got XP SP2.

or if you are rebuilding a new XP, you need the XP install CD with SP2.

"I used the files on the CD that came with the motherboard to make a boot
disk with the SATA/RAID driver on it, hit F6 when Windows was installing
and specified third-party driver, like I did with my SATA2 setup at home
which gave me no problems."


I was under the impression you needed to have the drivers on a floppy?

One of the files on the root of the floppy is "oemsetup.txt"?

Not necessarily - It depends on the boot order in BIOS. If the CD/DVD drive is checked before the C: drive, then it should work fine. If the boot order puts the CD drive after the Hard drives, then you would boot into windows before the config utility loaded.

You usually only have to use a floppy or cd to load the drivers during installation if you are creating a raid array. The standard windows drivers are fine for getting started. After Windows is installed you can then install the chipset drivers which usually includes the best performing sata controller if the drivers are up to date.

Like suba said, make sure you have SP2, as that'll usually install without needing to install any drivers with Windows setup (F6). Otherwise you have to install the drivers using F6 at the start of Windows setup. Otherwise pre-SP2 Win XP just won't see the drive.

If you start the install of Win XP, when you get to choose the drive to install to, you should see your SATA drive. If not, then you probably need some drivers or to adjust the BIOS.

I went through 2 boards before I realised this (and installing SP1 CD), as my manuals weren't particularly obvious. Oh what fun!

The disc I used to install Windows was a bona fide XP Pro SP2 OEM CD. I used a floppy disc to load the drivers I'd made using the CD that came with the motherboard.
I used this method to configure my machine at home (although it was a different mobo - Asrock Dual SATA2) and had no problems. I assumed SP2 would contain SATA and SATA2 drivers, even if they were only generic and not motherboard-specific. Anyway, it's all on an IDE drive now so what I need to do is configure Windows to recognise the drive then somehow transfer the whole OS / Program Files etc. to the SATA drive. Thanks for the advice so far, much appreciated.

you could try norton ghost to copy the hard drive to the sata but if you had problems in the first place this probably won't work.
detach the ide drive and try again installing xp to the sata.
dont press F6 just let windows check if there is a hard disk present, if so then the installation will go fine.
It was only some of the earlier motherboards that needed the floppy sata controllers.
let us know how it goes

I had this problem on my SATA drive, I think I got round it by not having the ide drive connected during setup so it forces the first partitiion on the sata drive to become an active C: drive. Instead of an Inactive c: drive. Once xp is up and running and everything is happy on the sata drive plug in the ide drive and use drive manager to set that up.

And to enable SATA2 you might need to download a utility from the drive manufacturer, I did with my hitachi drive. The the M/B will just pick it up automatically. The utility will also allow you to enable NCQ and any other features the drive has.

Regards jase

Yep same here, removed all the IDE drives and installed drivers with floppy at the beginning of setup . :thumb:


Andy

When I first tried to do the install, I didn't have any IDE drives connected (well apart from the DVDRAM drive of course). Hmm strange. When I tried it without using the boot floppy with the drivers, Windows said no disks are connected ! So presumably it will need some driver or other. At least with things they at the minute I've got a working PC on IDE, so it won't be any great disaster to unplug it and try a fresh install on the SATA. If I get Windows to recognise the drive under my current IDE install (as PeteBrant's post) and then format it, I might stand a better chance, or at least it won't take as long.
Anyway cheers for the suggestions so far, anyone else with any experience of this please post !