Cannot install Win XP, no HD driver?

[kafka7]

I'm trying to install Win XP x64 professional. I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, model number ST3250410AS.

Windows cannot find the driver for it during installation. Nor can I. It did not come with a driver disk. Can anyone help?

 

[Paperdoc]

That's a SATA drive. I suspect there's a simple solution built into your mobo.

Up to and including Win XP, Windows had the drivers necessary to deal with IDE (aka PATA) devices built in, including in the Windows Install process, and no other HDD systems. There is the long-standing process of adding a driver from an external source and located on a FLOPPY drive only during Windows Install (e.g,. RAID or SCSI devices) by pressing F6 at the right time, but lately many systems don't have that floppy available.

Mobo makers solved this problem with a new feature in BIOS. To get it set up you need to boot the machine into the BIOS Setup screens (usually by holding down the "Del" key as it starts) and find the place where the SATA ports are adjusted. First, of course, they need to be Enabled. Then look for how they are controlled. The BIOS may have up to four options: IDE or PATA Emulation, Native SATA, AHCI, or RAID. All of the last three require that you be able to load the required driver from floppy at the start of Windows Install. But that first choice lets the BIOS pretend to the rest of the world (read, to Windows) that these are just plain old PATA devices that Windows knows all about. You set your SATA port that way, Save and Reboot with the Windows Install Disk in the optical drive, and Windows is happy because it knows everything about how to use PATA devices.

As of VISTA windows now includes built-in drivers for SATA and, I believe, AHCI-mode devices, so this is no longer an issue.