Instaling XP Pro SP2 on a SATA drive

[Zoom77]

Hello,

I read in some guide that to install XP on a SATA drive it is required to have a floppy with some drivers.

Does this continue to be the case with XP Pro SP2 and the new motherboards?

 

[pscowboy]

The flavor of XP doesn't matter.

You'll need drivers if you enable RAID.

 

[Zoom77]

I will not use RAID. Does that mean I will not need any drivers on Floppy? Or using such drivers can enhance the performance of the hard drive?

 

[pscowboy]

You won't need the drivers on a floppy.

They won't enhance the performance of the hd.

The nature of a driver is to allow communication between a piece of hardware (a RAID for example) and software - the XP O/S.

 

[pcjim]

You may still need the drivers to load XP. I have an Giga-byte M.B. Intel based with SATA. When I install XP Pro SP2 I will get a (no hard drive found) if I try to install windows just from the CD-rom alone. Gigabyte posts the driver on ther web site and its easy to do. Download the file, install on a floppy. When you first start the windows installation you will see at the bottom of the screen note to push F6 to load drivers. It will contuine to load for a moment then stop and ask for the driver disk to be inserted in A: pop in the floppy push enter, it will show the driver on the screen push enter again and it will load the driver and finish the install.

 

[pscowboy]

Are you sure that's true even if you have only Standard IDE mode selected in the BIOS?

 

[pcjim]

Standard IDE mode = no problem (never actually seen a problem ever with standard IDE) refering to SATA 0 / 1 only. Also gigabyte fixed this problem on the second revision of the board. My intel board needs no driver to be installed during installation of windows (both are 875p chipset)