SATA question.

[eylee86]

Hi i'm about to build a new computer and I picked up a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. I have never dealt with SATA before and my question is, can i boot/install OS onto the drive with SATA cable right away? If there's specific steps to take what do i have to do? sorry for my noobness.

 

[chookman]

You may have to set SATA mode in your bios to IDE, or similar. Basically it will make your SATA drive appear as an IDE device, which negates the need for drivers.

 

[Shawnhath]

If you are building a new (keyword new) computer everything should work out great! Best of luck!

 

[Zorg]

As chookman said, either go into BIOS and set the drive for IDE, which I think it is by default, or you will have to load the AHCI drivers.

 

[blerb]

Well if the OP is installing Vista, go ahead and leave it at AHCI. You will be able to use some of the enhancing features that come with AHCI mode.

 

[cjl]

For XP, set the SATA mode in the bios to IDE. For Vista, set it to AHCI - that will enable the full set of features in SATA, and it will be faster. You can use AHCI in XP too, but if you enable it for the installation, you will need to install chipset drivers in the installation process.

 

[Zorg]

AHCI isn't noticeably faster than IDE, if any, depending on the drive. Also the extended feature set that you guys speak of is RAID, NCQ and hot swap. NCQ is optimized for server applications, it's actually slower in a desktop machine. Hot swap is primarily for servers as well. That leaves the only reason to go AHCI being RAID. So, if he doesn't want RAID, then there is no benefit to AHCI.

 

[eylee86]

thanks for the reply guys! yeah i'll be installing vista so but either way it seems i don't have to update any drivers before physically connecting sata cable to use the HDD!