installing windows with a sata hd

statue12 · 07-19-2006, 07:54 PM

My friend has a sata hd and the computer shop installed windows on. He now wants to reformat but when installing windows it says it cannot find no hard drives. Could he take the sata hd out and replace it with a normal hard drive without doing any configuration etc.

Thanks

PC eye · 07-19-2006, 08:11 PM

When installing Windows on a SATA drive you first have to see if there is an ide controller on the board. The ide controller will override the SATA bt default. With a strictly SATA board there is no eide controller to run a good old 40 or 80gb drive. A floppy disk with the SATA drivers has to be made up before running the installer for Windows. When the prompt comes up for other devices you then browse the floppy to have the installer copy those off of the 3 1/2". Windows is supposed to then see the SATA drive.
(don't feel bad. I'm still waiting for a friend to get busy getting his sata hd up and going to get my loaned out ide drive back.)

07-19-2006, 07:54 PM	#1 (permalink)
statue12 Silver Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 120	installing windows with a sata hd My friend has a sata hd and the computer shop installed windows on. He now wants to reformat but when installing windows it says it cannot find no hard drives. Could he take the sata hd out and replace it with a normal hard drive without doing any configuration etc. Thanks __________________ AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice :) 2GB Kingston pc 3200 400 Ram 120 GB Seagate Hrd Drive IDE 256mb ATI X800 pro AGP Aspire Xplorer Gaming case 400 watt jeantech psu Windows XP Home Edition

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07-19-2006, 08:11 PM	#2 (permalink)
PC eye Diamond Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Inside a pc Posts: 19,730	When installing Windows on a SATA drive you first have to see if there is an ide controller on the board. The ide controller will override the SATA bt default. With a strictly SATA board there is no eide controller to run a good old 40 or 80gb drive. A floppy disk with the SATA drivers has to be made up before running the installer for Windows. When the prompt comes up for other devices you then browse the floppy to have the installer copy those off of the 3 1/2". Windows is supposed to then see the SATA drive. (don't feel bad. I'm still waiting for a friend to get busy getting his sata hd up and going to get my loaned out ide drive back.)