SATA n00b

[rwillis]

Ok I just got an SATA HD for a new build. I've never used an SATA before and I've been hearing a lot about difficulty getting XP to recognize one. Can someone just tell me anything important I should know about installing an SATA with Windows XP? Also, I don't have a floppy drive... if for whatever reason I have to have some driver for xp to install, how will I be able to to that?

Thanks!

 

[Jim_L9]

You only need a driver if you are doing RAID on the MB.

 

[rwillis]

ah excellent thanks for the reply

 

[gse1]

That is technically true, you only *need* a driver floppy if using RAID mode. However you may find a driver floppy highly useful if you have a SATA controller set to AHCI mode, which allows the Native Command Queuing (NCQ) feature in modern hard drives. If you do need a driver for AHCI however, you should also have the option of temporarily setting the SATA controller to IDE mode in the system BIOS, install Windows and then install the AHCI driver and set the controller back to AHCI mode during the reboot.

I've just discovered this whilst installing a few machines this week and there are particular instructions to follow if you are doing the IDE to AHCI trick.