Installing a SATA drive new system

[BH2]

Hi Guys,
I am building a new computer, finally got all the parts, my only concern is
how to install the SATA Drive, I have and Epox 9NDA3J Rev2.0. The Drives
are WD3200 Caviar SE. From what I can make out during the OS install I will
need the driver for the drives, All I have with the Mobo is a CD Rom, but it
does not give me the install drivers all it gives me is Driver auto
installation Mobo or selective installation. Reading the Acrobat file it
tells me I need a floppy with the driver on it. I emailed Epox to their
credit they replied promptly, but did not give me the info I required,
infact I couldn't understand the broken English. Does anyone know where I
can get the SATA drivers to put on disk. Thanks for any help
Regards
Bob

 

[Bob Knowlden]

Are you installing a pair of drives in RAID, or just a single drive? What OS
are you using? (I suppose that it's XP.)

If you aren't using RAID, I believe that you can install to the SATA drive
without additional drivers. I recently did just that on an nForce 4
mainboard from Asus. (I believe that your nForce 3 will work the same.) The
Windows default drivers will be replaced when you install the nVidia chipset
drivers, but you will be able to install the OS without going the F6 route.

If you are setting up drives in RAID, you will want the floppy. If Epox
didn't provide a makedisk utility on the CD, maybe the simplest way to get
the drivers would be to download them from www.epox.com. (It's not a large
download, less than half a meg.) Alternately, you can probably find the
drivers in a directory on the CD, and just copy them to a floppy. A third
way would be to download the latest nForce drivers (version 5.11) from
www.nvidia.com, and expand the archive. (It's over 35 MB in size, though.)
There was no makedisk utility in the package I got for the nF4 chipset, but
the drivers were obvious.


Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.