new system won't see serial ata drive!

[derekhot]

i'm a newbie when it comes to system building but i'm giving it my best shot. i have lots of tasty new items loaded into a new case but can't install xp home because the system can't see my serial ata drive.
here's what i've got:
enermax case w/ 350 watt supply
microstar 865pe neo2-ls board
p4 2.8 processor
two sticks of corsair 512mb ram
radeon 9500 pro
seagate barracuda 120 gig serial ata drive
plextor dvd burner
so... i've looked at seagate's site and they identify a point in windows installation when i need to hit f6 and specify an 'additional mass storage device'. the drivers for said device are to be on a floppy. problem is that i don't know where to find these drivers. microstar's website has bios updates etc but how do i get those until the computer is running? besides it's a brand new board that supports serial ata, why doesn't it support it out of the box? or is my problem just one of not having bios set up correctly to recognize the drive? anybody know?

 

[svol]

BIOS and drivers are two totally different things: a BIOS is embedded software inside the hardware while a driver allows the OS to communicate with hardware.

SATA is so new that it came out after WinXP and WinXP doesn't carry support for this type of hardware for default. Which means you have to load drivers when you're installing WinXP as Seagate said on their site.

In most cases the SATA controller drivers should come on a floppy with the motherboard. Otherwise you can find the software for the floppy here: <A HREF="http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts-df/filter_results.asp?strOSs=45&strTypes=DRV,UTL&ProductID=961&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Home+Edition&submit=Go!" target="_new">Click</A>

I love my Delta 60HP 7000 RPM fan that puts out more dB then CFM