Installing XP Pro with SATA

[Blasphemy]

I wasn't sure where to put this question, but since it deals with SATA I thought motherboards would be as good a place as any.

I'm building a new rig with XP Pro and I'm not sure if I will be able to do a fresh install with a SATA Optical drive. I will probably be building with the Gigabyte DS3 board, and since it's only got 1 IDE channel, I figured I'd try to go all SATA. The computer I built in my sig I had to use a floppy driver for XP to see the Raptor, however I'm not sure if the same will be true for an optical drive. I suppose I could use an IDE optical for the intial install and just use the SATA optical after it's all said and done, but I'd really like to know if it's possible with this motherboard to install XP with the SATA optical.

So far I have these parts ready for the build:

500watt Enermax Liberty, 2GB Corsair XMS2 DD2800 PC2-6400 (2x1GB), Seagate 320GB SATA, eVGA 8800GTS 640mb, floppy drive, and a Lian Li PC-60BPlusII case

What I'm considering to complete the build is:

Either Gigabyte DS3 or Asus P5N-E SLI for the motherboard
Either NEC 7170A Drive (EIDE) or LITE-ON LH-20A1S (SATA)
For the CPU a C2D E4300 or a E6300 if the price drop happen soon like I've heard

Any other thoughts on this build are appreciated as well. Thanks.

 

[mkaibear]

It depends whether or not your motherboard will support booting from a SATA CD drive - it should do. It shouldn't need a driver disk (for the CD drive - if the version of XP you are installing is old enough it will need one for the hard disk)

 

[Blasphemy]

It depends whether or not your motherboard will support booting from a SATA CD drive - it should do. It shouldn't need a driver disk (for the CD drive - if the version of XP you are installing is old enough it will need one for the hard disk)

Yeah I'm sure I'll have to use a disk for the hard drive like I did before, I'm just wondering if I'll have a problem with the optical. I suppose booting from a CD would be completely dependent on the BIOS as you said, so hopefully the chipsets that I'm looking at (650i and P965) do have this support (I haven't read anything relating to this issue, probably because SATA optical drives are fairly new the market). I'm also considering the MSI P6N SLI as another motherboard option, as the price/performance seems to be really good.

 

[croc]

I'm not familiar with that MB, but most MB's have two sets of sata ports... non-raid and raid. As long as you are on the non-raid you should be OK, but... There could be an issue with the drivers for the dvd drive itself.

Try it and see... Worst case scenario is that you have to do a temporary connection with your present ide dvd drive.

And please let us know, as I (for one) am planning to do very similar in the not too distant future.

 

[BUFF]

You'll be fine.
I used a SATA optical on my DS4 (attched to the ICH8R in my case) to install to a SATA HDD.
ICH8 & ICH8R have native SATA support.

If you aren't going to use the Gigabyte (JMicron) controller the best thing to do is disable it in the BIOS.

 

[Blasphemy]

If you aren't going to use the Gigabyte (JMicron) controller the best thing to do is disable it in the BIOS.

Why is that? I think I remember reading something about the JMicron controllers on that board having an issue, but I can't remember exactly what it was about.