New install of Pro on SATA

[Mark G.]

Well I got a Western Digital Raptor (10,000 rpm) HD for Valentine's Day from
my girl. Anyhow, I want to do a reinstall of XP. Now the way to my
understanding that the boot operation works is that it first reads the IDE
and then soforth. I guess what I am asking, is there anything special that I
need to do in order for my OS to boot off of a SATA drive? I ask since this
is a different connection and all. So if there is anything I need to do,
then what? Thanks much.

Man I can't wait to start using this. I buddy of mine has one, and man what
a huge difference.

 

[Mark G.]

I should add that I want this is to be my bootable drive. The one with XP
Pro on it. In case that wasn't so clear in my original post. Thanks much.

 

[Guest]

Anybody else, please add to this, I'm a noob that just happened to see this
thread.

I am by no means an expert on this but it just so happens I did a complete
install of WinXP Pro on two SATA drives in a RAID 1 this weekend.

Once you have the SATA drives installed, make sure it's set to be bootable
in the BIOS, put in the windows XP CD and start the computer. Make sure you
have your SATA drivers on a floppy. Once the windows installation starts,
right at the very beginning, it's gonna tell you to press F6 to install SATA
drivers. Press F6, put the floppy in the drive and windows will then
recognize the drive. Windows will format it for ya and install windows. The
next time you boot, it'll boot into Windows.

That's down and dirty. It took me a few hours to figure that out lol, but
it was my first time biulding a computer from the ground up. It was
definately a learning experience!

I hope that helps.

 

[Mark G.]

I am not necessarily setting this up in a RAID configuration, just as
another HD. So from what you said, it is a different route. Hmm, any other
suggestions?

 

[Guest]

There should be no difference. Windows still saw my two drives as only one
due to the nature of the RAID array. As far as the windows installer was
concerned, I had only 1 hard drive so your installation should be the same.

 

[Mark G.]

Now with this 74gig drive, I think I am going to split it into 2 partitions,
is there anything special with SATA and partitions that I need to do with
this? Thanks much.

 

[Guest]

I also partitioned my new SATA drive lol. No difference as far as I could
tell. I installed Partition Magic 8 and it worked like a charm. I love that
program! I still have flashbacks of partitioning in the good ole DOS days...

 

[Guest]

I also partitioned my new SATA drive lol. No difference as far as I could
tell. I installed Partition Magic 8 and it worked like a charm. I love that
program! I still have flashbacks of partitioning in the good ole DOS days...

 

[Vagabond Software]

Well I got a Western Digital Raptor (10,000 rpm) HD for Valentine's Day from
my girl. Anyhow, I want to do a reinstall of XP. Now the way to my
understanding that the boot operation works is that it first reads the IDE
and then soforth. I guess what I am asking, is there anything special that I
need to do in order for my OS to boot off of a SATA drive? I ask since this
is a different connection and all. So if there is anything I need to do,
then what? Thanks much.

Man I can't wait to start using this. I buddy of mine has one, and man what
a huge difference.

As was already suggested, make sure your SATA drive is listed in the boot order in your BIOS. Most motherboards I've seen do NOT have the SATA drives in the boot order by default.

After booting your Win XP Pro CD (you shouldn't need to press F6 unless you're using RAID) and arriving at the partition and format part of the installation, make sure the partition you install Windows on is the C: partition.

I know you're reading this and saying "well, duh", but I just did a SATA install with a 200 GB drive divided into three partitions. I just breezed through the install process without paying attention (I was actually setting up three machines at the time) and accepting defaults. I found that Windows ended up being installed on the E: partition. I know this can happen on certain motherboards and have a friend that is still running his Windows from F: or G: after he built his machine and installed Windows on a SATA only system.

carl