Do I need the Intel INF Utility for SATA?

[John Smith]

I am curious if I need to install the Intel INF file Utility on my Windows XP Pro (Build
2600.xpsp2.030422-1633 : Service Pack 1)? Currently running fine but I'm not using any
USB2.0 devices or SATA HDs yet.

My P4(800) Springdale Chipset system is up-to-date with all the Windows XP Service Packs,
Driver Updates and Critical Updates found at the Windows Update page. My SATA and USB 2.0
controllers show up in Device Manager without problems. However, my mainboard manufacturer's
website has an Intel INF Utility posted for my board (a DFI PS83-BL using the latest BIOS)
and I've pasted this Utility's Readme file description below.

Also, my mainboard BIOS offers an "enhanced" mode option for enabling SATA which is supposed
to allow for "both" SATA Channels plus 4 PATA devices (2 masters and 2 slaves) from the
regular IDE controller. Furthermore, you can also choose to flip the SATA devices from 0 to
1 and 1 to 0.

I've emailed DFI many months ago several times about this but something must be getting lost
in translation, as they have never responded.

I searched newsgroups for this topic with Google which yield both "yes" and "maybe" answers.

Also some postings seem to warn about "switching from PATA to SATA on existing WinXP
installations." I get the feeling that something really bad will happen if I did that, so
I'm concerned because I need to upgrade to larger HDs. I would like to get a pair of SATA
160 Gb units. I plan to clone my existing PATA HDs using DriveImage7 and then switch to the
SATA connectors (which will also free up the standard onboard IDE controller for my DVD,
Burner and Zip drives).

Currently running with 2 - PATA 60 Gb Maxtors, each set as a master from the motherboard's
standard IDE controller (only WinXP Pro ... no other operating systems):

HD #1 - C and D (C Drive Primary Booting with D as a logical, both NTFS);
HD #2 - E and F (both logicals for data files and image backups, both NTFS)

Is this a bad thing to try and do I need the Intel INF file Utility installed prior to doing
this?

BTW, I thought WinXP (with the latest Service Packs) already supported SATA, USB2.0, etc
hardware? Is there a way under Device Manager, etc where I can check to see if my drivers,
etc could benefit from running the Intel INF Utility listed below:

*********************************************************
* Product: Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility
* Release: Production Version
* Version: 5.00.1012
* Target Chipset#: Intel(R) 82865G/PE/P, 82875P
* Date: March 12, 2003
*********************************************************
* 1. OVERVIEW
************************************************************
The Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility installs
to the target system the Windows* INF files that outline to
the operating system how the Intel(R) chipset components will
be configured. This is needed for the proper functioning of
the following features:

- Core PCI and ISAPNP Services
- AGP Support
- IDE/ATA33/ATA66/ATA100 Storage Support
- USB Support
- Identification of Intel(R) chipset components in
the Device Manager
************************************************************

Any help or thoughts would be greatly, greatly appreciated, Thanks .... JS

 

[noone]

865 chipset was not around when XP was released, so, yes, you should do
the Intel Chipset INF update. The one you listed is old tho, go get the
latest from the intel site,

http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/

install this AFTER you've installed XP and SP1 and done all the
necessary Windows Updates.

while youre there, get the RAID Driver too, IF (and only if) you want to
use the ICH5R RAID feature.

http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/

 

[David Hollway [MVP]]

[crossposting trimmed]

I am curious if I need to install the Intel INF file Utility on my Windows XP Pro (Build
2600.xpsp2.030422-1633 : Service Pack 1)? Currently running fine but I'm not using any
USB2.0 devices or SATA HDs yet.

Hi John,

You must install the .INF update on any system where the chipset post-dates
the OS. In other words, as the Intel 865/875 family chipsets were released
after Windows XP, you must install it in order to ensure that all chipset
devices are correctly utilised.

My P4(800) Springdale Chipset system is up-to-date with all the Windows XP Service Packs,
Driver Updates and Critical Updates found at the Windows Update page. My SATA and USB 2.0
controllers show up in Device Manager without problems. However, my mainboard manufacturer's
website has an Intel INF Utility posted for my board (a DFI PS83-BL using the latest BIOS)
and I've pasted this Utility's Readme file description below.

The system will appear to work fine without having installed the Intel
Chipset Update; however, not all the components of the chipset will be using
the optimal drivers and performance features. The chipset update isn't a
driver, it's just a collection of .INF hardware definition files that define
for Windows how it should handle the chipset devices. If you attempt to
install the update on a system that doesn't need it, the setup will exit
cleanly, and no harm will be done.

Also, my mainboard BIOS offers an "enhanced" mode option for enabling SATA which is supposed
to allow for "both" SATA Channels plus 4 PATA devices (2 masters and 2 slaves) from the
regular IDE controller. Furthermore, you can also choose to flip the SATA devices from 0 to
1 and 1 to 0.
I've emailed DFI many months ago several times about this but something must be getting lost
in translation, as they have never responded.
I searched newsgroups for this topic with Google which yield both "yes"

and "maybe" answers.

Legacy OSes (mainly Windows ME and earlier) can only boot from IDE
controllers on IRQs 14 or 15. For these OSes, you should therefore use the
"legacy" or "compatibility" mode of your BIOS, which will enable any 4 out
of the 6 (2 SATA + 4 PATA) available ATA ports.
For Windows 2000 and onwards you can use the "enhanced" mode, and use all 6
ports concurrently.

Also some postings seem to warn about "switching from PATA to SATA on existing WinXP
installations." I get the feeling that something really bad will happen if I did that, so
I'm concerned because I need to upgrade to larger HDs. I would like to get a pair of SATA
160 Gb units. I plan to clone my existing PATA HDs using DriveImage7 and then switch to the
SATA connectors (which will also free up the standard onboard IDE controller for my DVD,
Burner and Zip drives).

I've just done exactly that on my Intel D865PERL motherboard, switching from
a pair of Western Digital / IBM 120GB ATA/100 drives to a 160GB IBM SATA
drive & a 120GB Seagate drive. I used Ghost to clone the drives; it went
absolutely flawlessly:
1) Switched off XP,
2) switched the BIOS to Legacy mode, so that Ghost (under DOS) would see the
2 SATA drives and the 2 HDDs on the Primary IDE channel,
3) Booted Ghost from a USB pendrive
4) One by one, cloned the PATA drives to their SATA equivalents,
5) powered off, removed the PATA drives,
6) changed the BIOS back to "Enhanced" ATA mode, and rebooted.
7) System is now working perfectly on SATA drives, no reconfiguration
needed.

I hope this helps..

 

[noone]

followup:

1) Yes, you should do the inf file update. It'll provide all the
necesary info to XP to let it use the 865 chipset to its fullest. This is
a simple update and should not affect anything you've got right now. It
is highly recommended. Get the latest inf files from the intel site.

2) re: SATA. if you go into your bios and change the "on-chip IDE
controller" (or something like that) setting to "enhanced mode" you'll
enable the ICH5R SATA channels (while keeping the other two IDE
interfaces), and they will show up as IDE-3 and IDE-4 (each a single
channel, master-only, no slave). This should also not alter anything in
your current setup, since you won't have anything attached to them at this
time. If/when you do attach a drive(s) to these channels they will show
up as new drives, after the existing drives (later drive letters in XP).
You could set them up as RAID 0 or 1, using the Intel RAID BIOS feature
(cntrl-I at boot up), and at that point you will need to have the IAA-RAID
Edition installed (install it first, then attach the drives). If you do
that then those two drives will show up as a SINGLE additonal drive, again
w/ a later drive letter. This will, by definition, be a data drive.

If you want to install XP to that RAID 0 drive you need to change the
BIOS boot order, so that the on-chip SATA RAID Device is the first device
in the boot order. THIS WILL END UP ALTERING THE DRIVE LETTERS THO, the
new RAID drive will (probably) end up being d, e, or even f, depending on
how many of the other HD's and optical drives you leave installed [it wont
be C, that's for sure; it's not a problem, just something that often
throws people]. you should NOT simply restore a DriveImage to this new
RAID array, since the XP install in that image won't have the RAID drivers
- you'll need to do a clean XP install to the array, and you'll need to
have the floppy disk w/ the intel raid drivers on it; press F6 right up
front in the XP install process and feed it the floppy when it asks.

There should be info in your Motherboard manual about all this. The
intel site will also have info.

Good luck.

Best Bet in the future: go to the motherboard maker's site, and see if
there is a forum there; ask those users, they're sure to know exactly how
to do these things for that brand of motherboard. Look for a FAQ
there too.

 

[John Smith]

Thanks for your help .... very much appreciated. However I don't have a RAID controller on
this DFI 865 board (it's more like and Abit IS7 I think) .... just two single non-RAID SATA
connectors.

Will I still lose C Drive if I simply replace my old drives with SATAs?

Thanks again .... JS

 

[John Smith]

Thanks David for your help .... very much appreciated. BTW, did you still end up with a C
Drive after the upgrade? Another person suggests that I may lose the ability to keep my new
SATA boot drive as C?

BTW, no RAID on my DFI 865 board.

Thanks again .... JS

[crossposting trimmed]

I am curious if I need to install the Intel INF file Utility on my Windows XP Pro (Build
2600.xpsp2.030422-1633 : Service Pack 1)? Currently running fine but I'm not using any
USB2.0 devices or SATA HDs yet.

Hi John,

You must install the .INF update on any system where the chipset post-dates
the OS. In other words, as the Intel 865/875 family chipsets were released
after Windows XP, you must install it in order to ensure that all chipset
devices are correctly utilised.

My P4(800) Springdale Chipset system is up-to-date with all the Windows XP Service Packs,
Driver Updates and Critical Updates found at the Windows Update page. My SATA and USB 2.0
controllers show up in Device Manager without problems. However, my mainboard manufacturer's
website has an Intel INF Utility posted for my board (a DFI PS83-BL using the latest BIOS)
and I've pasted this Utility's Readme file description below.

The system will appear to work fine without having installed the Intel
Chipset Update; however, not all the components of the chipset will be using
the optimal drivers and performance features. The chipset update isn't a
driver, it's just a collection of .INF hardware definition files that define
for Windows how it should handle the chipset devices. If you attempt to
install the update on a system that doesn't need it, the setup will exit
cleanly, and no harm will be done.

Also, my mainboard BIOS offers an "enhanced" mode option for enabling SATA which is supposed
to allow for "both" SATA Channels plus 4 PATA devices (2 masters and 2 slaves) from the
regular IDE controller. Furthermore, you can also choose to flip the SATA devices from 0 to
1 and 1 to 0.
I've emailed DFI many months ago several times about this but something must be getting lost
in translation, as they have never responded.
I searched newsgroups for this topic with Google which yield both "yes"

and "maybe" answers.

Legacy OSes (mainly Windows ME and earlier) can only boot from IDE
controllers on IRQs 14 or 15. For these OSes, you should therefore use the
"legacy" or "compatibility" mode of your BIOS, which will enable any 4 out
of the 6 (2 SATA + 4 PATA) available ATA ports.
For Windows 2000 and onwards you can use the "enhanced" mode, and use all 6
ports concurrently.

Also some postings seem to warn about "switching from PATA to SATA on existing WinXP
installations." I get the feeling that something really bad will happen if I did that, so
I'm concerned because I need to upgrade to larger HDs. I would like to get a pair of SATA
160 Gb units. I plan to clone my existing PATA HDs using DriveImage7 and then switch to the
SATA connectors (which will also free up the standard onboard IDE controller for my DVD,
Burner and Zip drives).

I've just done exactly that on my Intel D865PERL motherboard, switching from
a pair of Western Digital / IBM 120GB ATA/100 drives to a 160GB IBM SATA
drive & a 120GB Seagate drive. I used Ghost to clone the drives; it went
absolutely flawlessly:
1) Switched off XP,
2) switched the BIOS to Legacy mode, so that Ghost (under DOS) would see the
2 SATA drives and the 2 HDDs on the Primary IDE channel,
3) Booted Ghost from a USB pendrive
4) One by one, cloned the PATA drives to their SATA equivalents,
5) powered off, removed the PATA drives,
6) changed the BIOS back to "Enhanced" ATA mode, and rebooted.
7) System is now working perfectly on SATA drives, no reconfiguration
needed.

I hope this helps..

 

[David Hollway [MVP]]

John,

Yes, I perhaps didn't make it clear in my last posting.. my system is now
SATA only, and I'm booting off the 160GB Hitachi/IBM SATA drive as C:.
I didn't mention RAID in my posting, but just to make it clear - the
Enhanced/Legacy BIOS option is nothing to do with RAID, it's just there to
determine which 4 of the 6 ATA ports on your PC are presented to the PC
(Legacy), or all 6 of them (Enhanced). If you were to have a board with
RAID, and set up a RAID 0 or 1 array, the two disks would of course appear
as one drive to the OS, and then you would have to install the Intel RAID
driver in order to install Windows XP.

Hope this helps.

Thanks David for your help .... very much appreciated. BTW, did you still end up with a C
Drive after the upgrade? Another person suggests that I may lose the ability to keep my new
SATA boot drive as C?

BTW, no RAID on my DFI 865 board.

Thanks again .... JS

[crossposting trimmed]

I am curious if I need to install the Intel INF file Utility on my

Windows
XP Pro (Build

2600.xpsp2.030422-1633 : Service Pack 1)? Currently running fine but

I'm
not using any

USB2.0 devices or SATA HDs yet.

Hi John,

You must install the .INF update on any system where the chipset post-dates
the OS. In other words, as the Intel 865/875 family chipsets were released
after Windows XP, you must install it in order to ensure that all chipset
devices are correctly utilised.

My P4(800) Springdale Chipset system is up-to-date with all the

Windows XP
Service Packs,

Driver Updates and Critical Updates found at the Windows Update page.

My
SATA and USB 2.0

controllers show up in Device Manager without problems. However, my mainboard manufacturer's
website has an Intel INF Utility posted for my board (a DFI PS83-BL

using
the latest BIOS)

and I've pasted this Utility's Readme file description below.

The system will appear to work fine without having installed the Intel
Chipset Update; however, not all the components of the chipset will be using
the optimal drivers and performance features. The chipset update isn't a
driver, it's just a collection of .INF hardware definition files that define
for Windows how it should handle the chipset devices. If you attempt to
install the update on a system that doesn't need it, the setup will exit
cleanly, and no harm will be done.

Also, my mainboard BIOS offers an "enhanced" mode option for enabling

SATA
which is supposed

to allow for "both" SATA Channels plus 4 PATA devices (2 masters and 2 slaves) from the
regular IDE controller. Furthermore, you can also choose to flip the

SATA
devices from 0 to

1 and 1 to 0.
I've emailed DFI many months ago several times about this but

something
must be getting lost

in translation, as they have never responded.
I searched newsgroups for this topic with Google which yield both

"yes"
and "maybe" answers.

Legacy OSes (mainly Windows ME and earlier) can only boot from IDE
controllers on IRQs 14 or 15. For these OSes, you should therefore use the
"legacy" or "compatibility" mode of your BIOS, which will enable any 4 out
of the 6 (2 SATA + 4 PATA) available ATA ports.
For Windows 2000 and onwards you can use the "enhanced" mode, and use all 6
ports concurrently.

Also some postings seem to warn about "switching from PATA to SATA on existing WinXP
installations." I get the feeling that something really bad will

happen if
I did that, so

I'm concerned because I need to upgrade to larger HDs. I would like to

get
a pair of SATA

160 Gb units. I plan to clone my existing PATA HDs using DriveImage7

and
then switch to the

SATA connectors (which will also free up the standard onboard IDE controller for my DVD,
Burner and Zip drives).

I've just done exactly that on my Intel D865PERL motherboard, switching from
a pair of Western Digital / IBM 120GB ATA/100 drives to a 160GB IBM SATA
drive & a 120GB Seagate drive. I used Ghost to clone the drives; it went
absolutely flawlessly:
1) Switched off XP,
2) switched the BIOS to Legacy mode, so that Ghost (under DOS) would see the
2 SATA drives and the 2 HDDs on the Primary IDE channel,
3) Booted Ghost from a USB pendrive
4) One by one, cloned the PATA drives to their SATA equivalents,
5) powered off, removed the PATA drives,
6) changed the BIOS back to "Enhanced" ATA mode, and rebooted.
7) System is now working perfectly on SATA drives, no reconfiguration
needed.

I hope this helps..

 

[John Smith]

Yes, yes thanks very much! .... I'm so motivated now that I'm going to make images of my
current drives this evening

John,

Yes, I perhaps didn't make it clear in my last posting.. my system is now
SATA only, and I'm booting off the 160GB Hitachi/IBM SATA drive as C:.
I didn't mention RAID in my posting, but just to make it clear - the
Enhanced/Legacy BIOS option is nothing to do with RAID, it's just there to
determine which 4 of the 6 ATA ports on your PC are presented to the PC
(Legacy), or all 6 of them (Enhanced). If you were to have a board with
RAID, and set up a RAID 0 or 1 array, the two disks would of course appear
as one drive to the OS, and then you would have to install the Intel RAID
driver in order to install Windows XP.

Hope this helps.

Thanks David for your help .... very much appreciated. BTW, did you still end up with a C
Drive after the upgrade? Another person suggests that I may lose the ability to keep my new
SATA boot drive as C?

BTW, no RAID on my DFI 865 board.

Thanks again .... JS

[crossposting trimmed]

"John Smith" <> wrote in message
I am curious if I need to install the Intel INF file Utility on my Windows
XP Pro (Build
2600.xpsp2.030422-1633 : Service Pack 1)? Currently running fine but I'm
not using any
USB2.0 devices or SATA HDs yet.

Hi John,

You must install the .INF update on any system where the chipset post-dates
the OS. In other words, as the Intel 865/875 family chipsets were released
after Windows XP, you must install it in order to ensure that all chipset
devices are correctly utilised.

My P4(800) Springdale Chipset system is up-to-date with all the Windows XP
Service Packs,
Driver Updates and Critical Updates found at the Windows Update page. My
SATA and USB 2.0
controllers show up in Device Manager without problems. However, my
mainboard manufacturer's
website has an Intel INF Utility posted for my board (a DFI PS83-BL using
the latest BIOS)
and I've pasted this Utility's Readme file description below.

The system will appear to work fine without having installed the Intel
Chipset Update; however, not all the components of the chipset will be using
the optimal drivers and performance features. The chipset update isn't a
driver, it's just a collection of .INF hardware definition files that define
for Windows how it should handle the chipset devices. If you attempt to
install the update on a system that doesn't need it, the setup will exit
cleanly, and no harm will be done.


Also, my mainboard BIOS offers an "enhanced" mode option for enabling SATA
which is supposed
to allow for "both" SATA Channels plus 4 PATA devices (2 masters and 2
slaves) from the
regular IDE controller. Furthermore, you can also choose to flip the SATA
devices from 0 to
1 and 1 to 0.
I've emailed DFI many months ago several times about this but something
must be getting lost
in translation, as they have never responded.
I searched newsgroups for this topic with Google which yield both "yes"
and "maybe" answers.

Legacy OSes (mainly Windows ME and earlier) can only boot from IDE
controllers on IRQs 14 or 15. For these OSes, you should therefore use the
"legacy" or "compatibility" mode of your BIOS, which will enable any 4 out
of the 6 (2 SATA + 4 PATA) available ATA ports.
For Windows 2000 and onwards you can use the "enhanced" mode, and use all 6
ports concurrently.

Also some postings seem to warn about "switching from PATA to SATA on
existing WinXP
installations." I get the feeling that something really bad will happen if
I did that, so
I'm concerned because I need to upgrade to larger HDs. I would like to get
a pair of SATA
160 Gb units. I plan to clone my existing PATA HDs using DriveImage7 and
then switch to the
SATA connectors (which will also free up the standard onboard IDE
controller for my DVD,
Burner and Zip drives).

I've just done exactly that on my Intel D865PERL motherboard, switching from
a pair of Western Digital / IBM 120GB ATA/100 drives to a 160GB IBM SATA
drive & a 120GB Seagate drive. I used Ghost to clone the drives; it went
absolutely flawlessly:
1) Switched off XP,
2) switched the BIOS to Legacy mode, so that Ghost (under DOS) would see the
2 SATA drives and the 2 HDDs on the Primary IDE channel,
3) Booted Ghost from a USB pendrive
4) One by one, cloned the PATA drives to their SATA equivalents,
5) powered off, removed the PATA drives,
6) changed the BIOS back to "Enhanced" ATA mode, and rebooted.
7) System is now working perfectly on SATA drives, no reconfiguration
needed.

I hope this helps..

 

[David Hollway [MVP]]

Great! Let us know how you get on.. follow the process I listed in my
last-but-one post and everything _should_ go OK, although of course there's
never any guarantees where PCs are concerned.
You'll still have the old PATA drives to revert to if you run into any
difficulties with the SATA cloning. Just don't boot Windows XP with both the
PATA and SATA drives installed (especially after you've cloned them) - it
will get confused.

 

[John Smith]

Okay here is an update of my big adventure:

I first installed the latest Intel INF Utility without any problems and made backup images
of my drives out to my external HD via Firewire. Then I bought a Seagate SATA 160 Gb 7200.7
HD this afternoon ($99.95 after rebate at CompUSA thru Saturday). Since I already had Ghost
2003 on my system, I used it instead of installing my new DriveImage7 software. I floppy
booted into Ghost's DOS interface and directly cloned (Disk-to Disk) my "non-booting" data
HD (E and F) and all is working good. Interest, I did not have to change the Enhanced Bios
settings for Ghost to read all the drives including the new SATA in my case. Maybe it has
to do with my BIOS on this DFI Springdale mainboard?

Anyway ........ so far so good and I see the 160 Gb drive's full capacity (about 150 Gb
under WinXP).

The only glitch that has me still scratching my head was that when I first got home, I
initially attempted to clone my "booting" system HD (C and D), which went well up to the
point that my system would not boot into Window XP from it (it was seen as a non-booting
drive and a system disk was requested). I tried tweaking every possible combination of BIOS
settings. Maybe it was just a bad cloning and the system files got mangled or maybe my BIOS
is buggy. However the BIOS certainly has all the options to specify any drive to be the
booting HD, etc. etc.

My setup during my failed attempts to boot with SATA:

Primary IDE Channel 0 Master - Old Maxtor PATA 60 Gb Data HD (E and F)
Primary IDE Channel 1 Slave - no device
Second IDE Channel 0 Master - DVD/ Burner
Second IDE Channel 1 Slave - Zip 250
First SATA Master - New cloned SATA 160 Gb Booting HD (C and D) specified as the booting HD
in BIOS
Second SATA Master - No Drive

All the above were properly seen by my system while my computer was working towards booting
into WinXP

Anyway, I wanted to verify that my SATA controller was not the problem before buying a
second SATA HD, so I cloned my old non-booting HD (E and F) directly over the first cloning
task (again using Ghost 2003's Disk-to Disk option) and everything worked okay (SATA as a
Data HD), so at least I can eliminate the SATA controller as the source of my initial
problems.

My current setup that is running okay:

Primary IDE Channel 0 Master - Old Maxtor PATA 60 Gb Booting HD (C and D)
Primary IDE Channel 1 Slave - no device
Second IDE Channel 0 Master - DVD/ Burner
Second IDE Channel 1 Slave - Zip 250
First SATA Master - New cloned SATA 160 Gb Data HD (E and F)
Second SATA Master - No Drive

I'll sleep on it for now and think about it some more in the morning.

Thanks again for all your help! ........... JS

 

[noone]

Thanks for your help .... very much appreciated. However I don't have a RAID controller on
this DFI 865 board (it's more like and Abit IS7 I think) .... just two single non-RAID SATA
connectors.

If it has the ICH5R (note the R) then it can do RAID; regular ICH5 can
not. ABIT IS7 does have the R, that's the mb I've got

Will I still lose C Drive if I simply replace my old drives with SATAs?

if you remove the old HD's and install a SATA into the IDE-3 plug then
yes, that new HD will most likely not be seen as C [on my setup it's E; I
have a CD/DVD burner on IDE-1, a zip on IDE-2, and a RAID-0 pair on
IDE-3/4. Zip is seen as C: (that's a known XP wierdness tho, it treats
it like an HD), CD/DVD as D:, and first partition of HD as E:].

=====================

Look for a KB artical on how XP assigns drive letters. I can summarize
briefly:

IDE channels are searched in order, 1 to N. The first Active Primary
Partition found is assigned C:, the next primary partition on the next HD
found is D:, etc until all primary partitions are found. Then the IDE's
are searched again, and any logical partitions [inside of each Extended
Partition] found are assigned the next available letter, in order.

Disk Manager will let you change the drive letters, but NOT for the system
volume NOR the boot volumn [which can be the same]. [System volumn holds
boot.ini and ntldr in the root; Boot volumn holds the /windows directory.
And yes, they really should be named the other way, but MS named them this
way long ago and we're stuck w/ it].

 

[Ronald Rey]

No it does not have the ICH5R .... no RAID. It is like a non-RAID Abit IS7 .... just a
plain vanilla 865PE chipset board.

DFI's website has a statement in the support section that says my board (DFI PS83-BL rev. A)
does not support a "booting" SATA HD ........ That note was dated back in May 2003. Since
then however, they have released 4 BIOS updates for improving lots of other stuff, but based
on my test, it looks like I'll have to wait still longer for a BIOS update that gives me the
ability to boot from a SATA HD (assuming the 865PE chipset, etc supports that feature).

I wonder if other brands of "non-RAID 865PE "chipset motherboards support "booting" SATA
HDs?

I may have to start a new thread in some of the other groups asking that very question.

Thanks .... JS

Thanks for your help .... very much appreciated. However I don't have a RAID controller on
this DFI 865 board (it's more like and Abit IS7 I think) .... just two single non-RAID SATA
connectors.

If it has the ICH5R (note the R) then it can do RAID; regular ICH5 can
not. ABIT IS7 does have the R, that's the mb I've got

Will I still lose C Drive if I simply replace my old drives with SATAs?

if you remove the old HD's and install a SATA into the IDE-3 plug then
yes, that new HD will most likely not be seen as C [on my setup it's E; I
have a CD/DVD burner on IDE-1, a zip on IDE-2, and a RAID-0 pair on
IDE-3/4. Zip is seen as C: (that's a known XP wierdness tho, it treats
it like an HD), CD/DVD as D:, and first partition of HD as E:].

=====================

Look for a KB artical on how XP assigns drive letters. I can summarize
briefly:

IDE channels are searched in order, 1 to N. The first Active Primary
Partition found is assigned C:, the next primary partition on the next HD
found is D:, etc until all primary partitions are found. Then the IDE's
are searched again, and any logical partitions [inside of each Extended
Partition] found are assigned the next available letter, in order.

Disk Manager will let you change the drive letters, but NOT for the system
volume NOR the boot volumn [which can be the same]. [System volumn holds
boot.ini and ntldr in the root; Boot volumn holds the /windows directory.
And yes, they really should be named the other way, but MS named them this
way long ago and we're stuck w/ it].

 

[noone]

I do boot from my SATA, no problem.

 

[David Hollway [MVP]]

No it does not have the ICH5R .... no RAID. It is like a non-RAID Abit IS7 .... just a
plain vanilla 865PE chipset board.

DFI's website has a statement in the support section that says my board (DFI PS83-BL rev. A)
does not support a "booting" SATA HD ........ That note was dated back in May 2003. Since
then however, they have released 4 BIOS updates for improving lots of other stuff, but based
on my test, it looks like I'll have to wait still longer for a BIOS update that gives me the
ability to boot from a SATA HD (assuming the 865PE chipset, etc supports that feature).

I wonder if other brands of "non-RAID 865PE "chipset motherboards support "booting" SATA
HDs?

Ronald,

As I have stated elsewhere in this thread, I use an Intel D865PERL
motherboard and boot with no problems from a Hitachi/IBM 160GB S-ATA drive,
which was in fact GHOSTed from a 120GB parallel ATA drive. This is an ICH5R,
but set to non-RAID mode - which makes it identical to an ICH5 as far as the
OS, BIOS and drivers are concerned.

Booting from the S-ATA drives is certainly "supported" by the chipset - it's
not really governed by the chipset, though, as much as the BIOS. And I have
yet to see an ICH5 or ICH5R based board that *doesn't* support booting from
S-ATA - this capability is in the Intel BIOS Writers' Guide for ICH5, and as
such is a baseline capability. Which is why I'm very, very surprised that
DFI have apparently messed up in this way. I've looked on their site but
can't see anything about not booting from S-ATA. Can you quote the URL?

 

[John Smith]

David ..... I found that info on the DFI FAQ list for you regarding the DFI PS83-BL mobo ...
looks to me like DFI has indeed messed up and I need to start hounding them. The only
problem is DFI's Tech Support for North American Customers never, ever bothers to respond
..... at least not to my 5 or 6 emails over the last few months. That's mighty pitiful ......
YOU HEAR THAT DFI !!!!!):

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Support/mb_faq_us.jsp?FAQ_ID=1560&SUBMITTED=No&PAGE_TYPE=US

Anyway David, you can see from this link they have highlighted in RED that their 856PE board
does not support booting from the SATA HD ...... I'm going to point this out to Fry's who is
selling a lot of these. Also there is no warranty for North American Customers! The
website says something like "sorry Charlie but you got to work out defect problems with your
retailer" ..... I'm getting tempted to throw in an Intel Branded 865PE board. I wonder if I
can do that without having to go through a Repair Install of WinXP since the chipset is the
same and I've not enabled the onboard sound?

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:08:28 -0800, "John Smith"

I am curious if I need to install the Intel INF file Utility on my Windows XP Pro (Build
2600.xpsp2.030422-1633 : Service Pack 1)? Currently running fine but I'm not using any
USB2.0 devices or SATA HDs yet.

My P4(800) Springdale Chipset system is up-to-date with all the Windows XP Service Packs,

What chipset is "Springdale"? If as old as 800MHz PIII and Celeron,
XP should know what it is, but if as new as 800MHz-base-speed P4, it
won't. Typically you *start* the system build process with the .inf
before anything else; if you've lived this long, I'd be inclined NOT
to retro-fit it in case it creates a PnP and WPA storm.

My SATA and USB 2.0 controllers show up in Device Manager without problems.
Nice.

Also, my mainboard BIOS offers an "enhanced" mode option for enabling SATA which is supposed
to allow for "both" SATA Channels plus 4 PATA devices (2 masters and 2 slaves)

That's another setting I would NOT change on the fly. Win9x (Win98xx,
WinME etc.) can't work with S-ATA in combination with P-ATA in
enhanced mode; it wants to see no more than 4 ATA(PI) devices.

Also some postings seem to warn about "switching from PATA to SATA on existing WinXP
installations." I get the feeling that something really bad will happen if I did that, so
I'm concerned because I need to upgrade to larger HDs. I would like to get a pair of SATA
160 Gb units. I plan to clone my existing PATA HDs using DriveImage7 and then switch to the
SATA connectors (which will also free up the standard onboard IDE controller for my DVD,
Burner and Zip drives).

Good luck - XP's brittle when it comes to this sort of thing. File
level copies fail outsight, image transfers may or may not work, may
need some fiddling. So I choose my HD for life.

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