Installing WinXP on a SATA HDD

Sinster

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I don't have a floppy and heard that its a pain in the *** to do a fresh install on a SATA Drive. So I'm asking my favorite "help" forum for some advice.. So how so you suggest I do this?
 
I don't recall having to do anything other than putting in the XP CD and booting.
Have you tried that?



ok....now that I think back....it's been awhile....I did have to load the drivers for the SATA because they aren't included on the XP CD and you can't load drivers from a CD. I guess you'll have to do what I did and go buy a floppy drive for about $2= $10
 
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Same here, I've heard that sometimes you have to use a floppy and then hit one fo the F keys to get windows setup to grab the drivers for the Sata drive from the disk, but I've never had an issue with just booting from teh windows cd and running the setup. Windows has always detected the Sata drives no problem
 
jpom said:
Same here, I've heard that sometimes you have to use a floppy and then hit one fo the F keys to get windows setup to grab the drivers for the Sata drive from the disk, but I've never had an issue with just booting from teh windows cd and running the setup. Windows has always detected the Sata drives no problem

my XP install CD didn't have SP1 or SP2. Maybe M$ updated them to include SATA drivers if you have an install that includes SP1/SP2
 
I think it's really stupid you have to install 3rd party drivers from a floppy and you can't use a CD. A lot of PC's today don't even include floppy drives.

If you don't wanna buy one, just borrow one from a neighbor for an hour. or drive around looking for an old PC sitting out for the trash :)
 
it also depends on the board its self some will show the sata as an ide channel like the intel boards we deal with and the NF4. what board do you have
 
Q. Why do we even have floppies anymore, they are so useless?
A. For stupid situations like this. :(
 
I have installed on many SATA Hard Drives, and never needed a floppy. I do have a WinXP slipstreamed SP2 CD, however it is also of note that it really depends on the motherboard. I tend to use Intel Motherboards for most of my systems, or OEM brands for AMD systems. This is mostly for cost and reliability, and has also made it easier allowing for a wider availability of drivers.
 
Last week I setup a new Dell Dimension 9100 with SATA. Using a XP SP2 CD I had to load the drivers for the SATA drives from a floppy by pressing F6 at the beginning of XP setup.

And yes, it was an Intel board and an Intel controller.
 
If the SATA is native then you will not need a driver.

In the specifications for the board it should read "Native SATA". However if you are going to use the SATA to form a RAID array wyou will need to load a RAID driver.


Some motherboards will allow the use of a USB pen drive to install the drivers.
 
Sinster, try looking in your BIOS settings. Not sure if it'd be the same on an NVidia based board, but on my GigaByte Intel board, there's a setting that automatically enables SATA RAID when a drive is connected to a SATA port on my motherboard, no matter how many drives there are, even if it's just one. If there is a setting like that..... such as On-Board SATA RAID or something of the sort, disable it. That's what i had to do, and then installing XP on my SATA drive was as easy as installing it on an IDE drive.
 
I was able to format the SATA, the only problem is doesn't want to boot from it. I was able to format and start the initial process and that was it.

Since it's formatted and it's showing up in control panel can I add the drivers since I don't have a floppy?

BIOS and Windows detects the drive but I can't get the initial boot.
 
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You will only need a floppy drive if you intend to install a multidisk RAID array. Otherwise, you should just be able to boot from the CD. As long as your mobo detects the hard drive you should be okay. If it doesn't detect it, you may simply need to enable the SATA controller in the BIOS. Let us know how it goes and if you need any more help.
 
I don't have RAID enabled and the bios is detected the drive as the "4th Master" but it's not booting. I will try setting up windows again and let you know.
 
bparrott said:
You will only need a floppy drive if you intend to install a multidisk RAID array. Otherwise, you should just be able to boot from the CD. As long as your mobo detects the hard drive you should be okay. If it doesn't detect it, you may simply need to enable the SATA controller in the BIOS. Let us know how it goes and if you need any more help.

Ok this isnt entirely true. Since SATA came out after XP was released the windows setup doesnt have support for it. Using the floppy allows the XP setup to see the SATA controller and any hard drives connected to it.

Sinster said:
I don't have RAID enabled and the bios is detected the drive as the "4th Master" but it's not booting. I will try setting up windows again and let you know.

Do you have any other hard drives installed?
 
I just built a new system using an Epox motherboard with the nVidia 3 chipset and a Samsung SATA drive, no floppy on the system. I got a new copy of WinXP home with SP2 and it formated the drive and installed just fine. The CD drive I booted from was however an IDE device.
 
cdroms dont use sata there mostly all IDE, who would want a SATA cdrom, optical driver are slow. Like mentioned before, some motherboard have native sata and dont need a floppy.
 
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Admiral Michael, if he's just installing XP onto a normal SATA drive, no raid array or anything of the sort, there would be no need to have a floppy disk with drivers on it. Said floppy is only for setting up a RAID controller, not a SATA controller. It doesn't even say anywhere during that part that it's for installing a SATA controller.

Sinster, are you SURE RAID isn't enabled? my motherboard, for example, has the SATA RAID set by default, so whenever i have to flash my bios, i always have to go back in and turn it off.
 

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