Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (
More info?)
Al Franz wrote:
> If one has a hard drive installed in an older system attached to a PCI Host
> Adapter with drivers installed for a specific operating system. Then moves
> that hard drive to a more modern PC with a newer motherboard that can
> recognize the drive should it still work without having to reinstall the
> operating system?
Well, there's more to 'recognizable' than just the drive. The O.S. has to
'recognize' the host adapter and if it doesn't know that the host adapter
is there, and how to talk to it, then there's no way for it, the O.S., to
know if a drive is there or not.
Whether the O.S. needs to be 'reinstalled' depends on the O.S. Win9x will,
often, simply find new devices and install them, although it can get
confused if the entire motherboard is different (e.g. PNP isn't going to
work properly if the motherboard PNP resource is different so it may not
'find' new PNP devices. More often than not, however, it will discover the
proper PNP resource on the non-PNP scan but it can get quite confusing,
taking many multiple reboots to get it all sorted out.)
Win2000/XP needs either an 'upgrade' or 'repair' (or fresh install) to
redetect system devices because it's hardware abstraction layer is a lot
more complex than the Win9x mechanism and, so, can't allow for 'on the fly'
reallocation of core system components ('new' hardware on top of the
existing core is not a problem. It's the CHANGING of core components that
is disallowed [changing the motherboard type is a core change]).
> Do Host Adapters with drivers make the drive only recognizable when attached
> to the host adaper?
What else would it be attached to?
I imagine you meant something else, like is it only 'recognizable' on THAT
adapter? No, it is not 'specific' to 'that' host adapter. Well, unless the
host adapter is doing something 'special' above and beyond being a 'normal'
IDE (or SATA) interface. But, in general, if the drive is setup (I.E.
formatted) on one host adapter then it should work fine on any other host
adapter of the same type as long as it (and the BIOS) is capable of
handling the same kind of drive. It won't work if you try to move a 120meg
drive to a motherboard that has an 80 meg limit in BIOS but that's only an
issue when moving one to an older system.
This is where standards come in. LBA drive addressing is standardized.
Formatting is standardized (by the O.S.). The hardware IDE interface is
standardized. They're all interchangeable.
Where the 'difference' comes in is how the manufacturer's hardware
implementation of these standards (host adapter) connects into the O.S. and
that is taken care of by their driver, and is why a driver is needed: It
makes their hardware look 'standard' to the O.S. thereby completing the
'standardization' of the entire path.
The wrong driver, of course, will not talk properly to the hardware and so
nothing will be 'seen' past it (or it will behave oddly). Put the right
driver in and all that 'standard' hardware becomes visible.
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