how to install and configure a sata drive in a non-sata motherboard XP machine

MrHorsepower · Jan 30, 2014

I have an HP Pavilion 713c. 3.06Ghz/533Mhz H-T P4. XPSP2. The MB has no SATA ports. Added a SiI 3112a 2-port NON-RAID controller and updated its BIOS. Now it ID's the SATA drive correctly. With MB BIOS boot priority set to 'Add on card' as 1st boot device, boot hangs at controller's drive ID DOS screen. If I switch MB BIOS boot priority to 'MAXTOR IDE' as 1st boot device, machine boots to XP. Device manager and Explorer recognizes the SATA drive (WD CAVIAR 2500JS) and I can R&W to it. I want to figure out how to boot to the SATA drive so I can then install a SSD. Has anyone solved this issue already? Thanks!

mbreslin1954 · Jan 30, 2014

I think it's time to get a new system with a motherboard with built-in SATA ports. Yours must be quite old by now. In addition, support for XP ends in a few months.

MrHorsepower · Jan 30, 2014

mbreslin1954 :

Windows 1.0 for $99!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk

Thanks, but I'm an old dog.

I also HATE that everything is made in China.

This machine is still plenty fast enough, but I'm ready for a clean XP install with the original HP restore discs and want to do it with an SSD. I've got a decent D865PERL Intel board w/SATA ports that I could use, but I don't think the HP restore will work without the original HP MB BIOS.

mbreslin1954 · Jan 30, 2014

No, if you want to use the HP restore disks then you need to keep your original motherboard. The problem with the restore is that the original XP probably doesn't have any SATA drivers for your SATA adapter card. On a normal XP installation you would hit the F6 button to install SATA drivers, but I don't know how that would work with a restore disk, as that's not a normal, clean install of XP, it's a restore of a system image.

MrHorsepower · Jan 30, 2014

mbreslin1954 :

F6.... but that doesn't make the XP install write to the MB BIOS does it? I've got the proper SiI 3112a controller driver for XP and the drive functions perfectly in Windows. Could it be that the SATA III hard drive is incapable of booting with the old PCI SATA I controller card? Could jumper settings on the hard drive correct the mismatch?

mbreslin1954 · Jan 30, 2014

The F6 key during the early phase of Windows XP installation is a way to tell the install program that you have hard drive drivers to provide for it, before it starts to look for hard drives to install on. It does not write to BIOS in any way, shape, or form.

I used to have an old Abit motherboard that actually had two serial ports (SATA) on the motherboard, but I still had to "F6" during Windows XP installation because XP did not know how to talk to the hardware SATA ports, and the drivers on the floppy diskette were the same SiI drivers you have. The interesting problem was that after hitting F6 Windows XP would ONLY look for drivers from the floppy drive, you could not provide them from an optical disk (probably the same for USB flash drives). That was Windows XP no-service-pack, perhaps service pack 3 had more drivers built into it.

SATA is backward compatible so I doubt the drive is incapable of booting from the PCI SATA I controller. I have found it very difficult to boot from PCI drive controllers. The job of BIOS is to locate a bootable drive and then to go to that drive to start loading the operating system. It seems like many times BIOS can't see PCI drive cards in order to locate a drive connected to them. They work fine once Windows is up and running, for instance if you are running a RAID array on it for data, but booting from them is another story.

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how to install and configure a sata drive in a non-sata motherboard XP machine

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