XP & SATA Drivers?

P

PabloTeK

Active Member
I've heard bad things recently about XP, you need a floppy drive to install it onto a SATA drive. Has this been fixed, or do I need to add a floppy to the final config before buying it?

P a u l
 
You need to buy a floppy drive if you plan on installing to a SATA drive.... I always build computers with floppy drives. Never know when they'll come in handy even if you aren't using a SATA drive.
 
Unless your motherboard has the ability to boot from USB drives, it would have to be internal.

And you dont need a floppy drive to install XP on a SATA drive, in the past you used to need SATA drivers, but I believe that was fixed (possible with SP2). You just boot off of the XP CD, and Windows will see it.
 
[-0MEGA-];514684 said:
Unless your motherboard has the ability to boot from USB drives, it would have to be internal.

And you dont need a floppy drive to install XP on a SATA drive, in the past you used to need SATA drivers, but I believe that was fixed (possible with SP2). You just boot off of the XP CD, and Windows will see it.
Click to expand...

Ooh, that should make things a lot simpler when it comes to installing XP.:)

Cheers [-0MEGA-]
 
[-0MEGA-];514684 said:
Unless your motherboard has the ability to boot from USB drives, it would have to be internal.

And you dont need a floppy drive to install XP on a SATA drive, in the past you used to need SATA drivers, but I believe that was fixed (possible with SP2). You just boot off of the XP CD, and Windows will see it.
Click to expand...

I have the Asus p5gd1 motherboard and it would not see the SATA drive without installing the driver first, with using a XP SP2 cd. I also built 2 computers with same motherboard, one needed the driver, the other didn't. weird huh...
 
SATA Drivers

Sometimes you do need a floppy disk drive for the preinstall of SATA drivers.
However, sometimes you dont!

It all depends on the chip on your motherboard (i.e VIA, INTEL e.t.c) that acts as the controller for the SATA drive.

For example, for my old motherboard i had a VIA chip, and the drivers for my SATA disk drive were not built into my XP PRO SP2 install disk, therefore i had to make a SATA driver disk (floppy) for the preinstall of the drivers, before i could continue with an install of XP.

But for my new motherboard, i didnt have to, as the INTEL drivers required are built into my XP PRO SP2 install disk.

It just depends.........

Usually it'll tell you with the documention that comes with your motherboard.

If you dont have it (you've got a prebuilt machine e.t.c) then your be able to view it by going to the site of the manufacturer of your motherboard.

There your be able to download the manual and drivers (if needed) for your motherboard, so your be able to install your SATA drive successfully.
 
[-0MEGA-];514684 said:
Unless your motherboard has the ability to boot from USB drives, it would have to be internal.

And you dont need a floppy drive to install XP on a SATA drive, in the past you used to need SATA drivers, but I believe that was fixed (possible with SP2). You just boot off of the XP CD, and Windows will see it.
Click to expand...

in the 2 builds i've done with SATA drives, i had to install the drivers from a floppy disk... XP Pro SP2 didn't recognize them...
 
goosy22 said:
in the 2 builds i've done with SATA drives, i had to install the drivers from a floppy disk... XP Pro SP2 didn't recognize them...
Click to expand...

Thats really weird. In all the computers i've used (ranging from Semprons to Celerons, and Pentium 4's to Core 2 Duos), i've never had to install drivers for a SATA hard drive.
 
[-0MEGA-];519871 said:
Thats really weird. In all the computers i've used (ranging from Semprons to Celerons, and Pentium 4's to Core 2 Duos), i've never had to install drivers for a SATA hard drive.
Click to expand...

whoops... my bad Geoff, i forgot to say that i was setting up RAID with the drives... i haven't worked with SATA other than in RAID mode... i thought we were talking about RAID :o...
 
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