Installing XP on a SATA drive, I tried to do the F6 thing, but it wouldnt reconize the drivers on the floppy (I put the drivers from the MoBo on the floppy, but did not make any sub directories, should I?) What's wierd is windows reconized the drive without the SATA drivers and installed with no problem. XP is running great, but I have C and D drives that windows says are 0 megs. Is there anyway to fix this without a reinstall, and if I need to reinstall, any one know how to set up the floppy so windows reconizes the SATA drivers? Thanks

Let me restate the problem now that I have a better grip on it. Intsalled XP onto a Seagate 160GB Barracuda SATA with NCQ Hard Drive on a CHAINTECH NVIDIA nForce4 MoBo. I tried to load the SATA drivers form the MoBo cd to a floppy and hit F6 and install the SATA drivers to no avail (floppy drive just clicks 4 times, then windows asks again to insert disk. Tried 3 disks, 2 floppy drives and 2 cables) But XP did reconize the drive as an IDE drive. So its all running fine, but I want the SATA drivers for performance. Tried everthing to update the drivers, but I am stuck. Do I need to reinstall and get them in right away, or can I just do it from inside windows? Thanks for any help.

Pardon my confusion, but how did you load the drivers if XP didn't access the floppy? My understanding is that XP doesn't recognize SATA w/o loading the drivers off of a floppy. I have a Seagate 200GB SATA and XP was looking for the drivers off of a floppy (F6) when I tried to install on the drive.

I didn't load the drivers, that is what I want to do. I think XP reconized the drive as an IDE drive.

Hmm, now I am really curious. I was unsuccessful w/o attempting to use the floppy. From what I have read and heard, you need to install off of the floppy. I don'tunderstand how XP "saw" the SATA drive. Is it your only HDD?

Yep- its my only hard drive. After 2 days of unsucessfual attempts to load the drivers via F6 floppy, I just said screw it and see what happens, and windows just installed flawlessley. It is it even worth worrying about it?

The drivers are for the HDD controller I believe. If you've got XP loaded, I think you're all set...

Most nforceboards should not have a problem .. You need to have the sata on but if you still are read this..


SATA controller driver

Your Motherboard or SATA controller card requires a driver to work properly. If you did not get a Floppy Disk with the SATA driver included with your Motherboard you will have to make one. The SATA drivers can be located on the installation CD that came with your Motherboard or preferably, download the latest SATA controller drivers from the manufacturers site. Once you have located the drivers copy them to a formatted floppy disk. Make sure they are in the root directory i.e. not contained within any folders.

BIOS settings

When you turn on the PC hit the Delete key when prompted and you will enter the BIOS (Basic Input Output System). Here you set the first boot device to be the CDROM drive, the option is usually found under the Advanced Options section but this depends on your BIOS and you may have to look around for it. Once you have done this save and exit.

Installing the SATA controller driver

Once you have set the PC to boot from the CD make sure the XP CD is in the CD drive and start the installation as per usual. Within the first minute or so of the installation Windows will prompt you to press F6 to install RAID or SCSI drivers, do this. Windows will continue to install then ask you to locate the driver. now with the floppy disk created earlier in drive A: select the driver and hit Enter.

With the SATA drivers installed you can now continue the Windows installation as usual.

BIOS settings revisited

Once Windows has finished installing you will need to make sure the PC is set to boot from the SATA drive. To do this make the first boot device SATA if the option is available. If not you have two options: HD0 - If there are no IDE HDs present, or SCSI if you do plan on running an IDE HD as a secondary device.

Hi. Newbie here. I didn't know about pressing F6 at the beginning of setup, so I was blissfully unaware that I was doing anything wrong. However, like jeffwheeler22, Windows XP is running flawlessy on my Seagate 200GB SATA drive (partitioned 40GB/160GB). Should I reformat and start again, or should I just leave it be? Or is there something I can do within Windows?
I am running an aOpen XC Cube EZ65-II with 1GB Kingston RAM, 2.4GHz Pentium 4, NEC DVD writer, Seagate 200GB SATA hard drive. I don't have a floppy drive as I don't use floppy disks anymore, but I can always get hold of one if I'll need one for installing drivers.

Thanks for your time,

Tom

I too have been having the same problem & wondering if my settings are right in the Bios. I want a non-raid set up so I guess it should be AHCI

On my second install of XP it asked for the drivers from the floppy & I chose the AHCI but I still don't think all is well as I only have half of one of my drives visible in Windows. This could be because I only formatted one half but the properties of the drive XP is installed on aren't available either.

I have an Asus P5GD2 Deluxe. Does anyone else have this model & can tell me if I need to do the following:

One setting was the following which the default was (Standard IDE)
Should this be set to AHCI?

Configure SATA As [Standard IDE]
Sets the Serial ATA configuration. When set in Advanced Host Controller
Interface (AHCI) or RAID mode the SATA controller is set to Native mode.
Configuration options: [Standard IDE] [AHCI] [RAID]

Hope I've made sense

Ok, now I'm almost certain that my SATA hard drive is running in IDE mode.
Here's what I did:
Go to Device Manager
Click on Disk drives
Right click on the drive in question and select Properties
Click on the Details tab

From the drop down menu:
'Device Instace Id' reads "IDE\DISKST3200822AS______3.01______\5&97E506E&0&0.0.0"
'Hardware Ids reads' "IDE\DiskST3200822AS___________3.01___
IDE\ST3200822AS___________3.01___
IDE\DiskST3200822AS______________
ST3200822AS___________3.01___
GenDisk"
'Enumerator' reads "IDE"

The Enumerator entry just about sums it up I think...

Is there any way of changing my hard drive to SATA mode without wiping it clean and starting again?

Many thanks,

Tom

Are you having any problems with the current configuration? In my opinion if you are not seeing any problesm.. drive corruption.. slow access to files.. missing disk space.. i would go with the old saying.. if its not broke dont fix it.

I recently installed xp on a abit nf7-s2 mobo and at first when tweaking bios i noticed that my 2 80Gig SATA drives were showing up as IDE channel 5/6. I am not 100% sure if this is normal if you are not running a raid 0/1 but i resolved the problem myself by enabling the onboard raid controller( i believe that it will show as an IDE drive if you do not enable the SATA raid controller in bios, and by default mine was set to disabled)

No everything seems to be working fine. You're right - I think I'll leave it be. Just out of interest is it possible to install the drivers (or whatever may be needed) from XP to convert it to a SATA drive?

Cheers,

Tom

PS: Who on earth would use this smiley puke: ?!?! It's disgusting!

Just to help clear up some confusion.
The only reason you need to use the "F6" prompt during Windows setup is to supply drivers for a disk controller that windows does NOT have drivers for already.

If setup makes it to the screen prompting where to install Windows to, and your disk shows up, then you're good to go. From this point all other drivers can be installed after windows is running on your computer.

Thanks for clearing that up PanicX.
However my mobo didn't come a CD or floppy, and I can't find any SATA drivers on the aOpen website so I guess I'm stuck with IDE anyway.

If anyone has SATA drivers for an aOpen XC Cube EZ65-II, please let me know!

Tom

PS: Sorry for hijacking your thread jeffwheeler22!

Try posting on the AOpen Forum

http://xc.aopen.com.tw/aoeb/index.aspx

Problems Installing Win XP Pro SP2 on SATA HDD

I recently purchased a Dell XPS 400 originally with MS Win XP Media Edition. The hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda 160GB (Serial ATA-150). The original configuration and default setting in the BIOS was "RAID Autodetect / AHCI" Unfortunately, I was having many complications getting WIN XP setup to recognize my hard drive configuration. One thread said to change the configuration in the BIOS to "Combination" which means SATA/PATA, install win XP and then change the config back. Easier said than done!! I have installed Win XP and everything seems to be working fine. So, without sounding stupid, by not being able to change the hard drive configuration over to AHCI, am I losing anyt signicant speed, performance or anything else?

Also, if someone can help me out, I am not against doing another re-install as well. Any help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!!

What make & model number is your motherboard?

Its a dell PC.. I am pretty sure the software they keep referring me to is from Intel. So I wld assume its an Intel mobo. I am running a Pentium D Processor 820 with Dual Core Technology. Hope that helps!