P4C800-E Deluxe first install

[Bob Davis]

A friend bought a used barebones system with a P4C800-E Deluxe mobo, and I'm
tasked with helping with the installation. Having assembled 875-chipset
systems many times before with PATA drives, I would like to know the best
method for installing XP Pro on a 74gb SATA Raptor.

On my system (Gigabyte mobo with 875 chipset) a SATA will automatically
install on an EIDE controller if the ICH5R or second on-board SATA
controller are not enabled in the bios and drivers not installed. Is it
better to allow the SATA to install this way, then enable the ICH5R
SATA-RAID controller and install the drivers from within XP Pro? Or should
I have the drivers available on a floppy and install them using the f6
prompt when installing XP, with SATA in place during the installation?

The driver provided on the Asus site is old, dating to 2003, but a newer
driver is available on the Intel site that's not specific to any mobo model.
Has anyone tried using the newer driver? What's my best procedure for this
installation?

 

[Mark A]

A friend bought a used barebones system with a P4C800-E Deluxe mobo, and
I'm tasked with helping with the installation. Having assembled
875-chipset systems many times before with PATA drives, I would like to
know the best method for installing XP Pro on a 74gb SATA Raptor.

On my system (Gigabyte mobo with 875 chipset) a SATA will automatically
install on an EIDE controller if the ICH5R or second on-board SATA
controller are not enabled in the bios and drivers not installed. Is it
better to allow the SATA to install this way, then enable the ICH5R
SATA-RAID controller and install the drivers from within XP Pro? Or
should I have the drivers available on a floppy and install them using the
f6 prompt when installing XP, with SATA in place during the installation?

The driver provided on the Asus site is old, dating to 2003, but a newer
driver is available on the Intel site that's not specific to any mobo
model. Has anyone tried using the newer driver? What's my best procedure
for this installation?

It may depend on whether you have a copy of XP Pro with SP2 slipstreamed, or
the original XP with no SP's. If you have XP with SP2, you should be able to
install directly on a SATA device, and will only need a driver from floppy
if you intend to use RAID (obviously this is not applicable if there is only
1 drive).

 

[RBM]

I installed XP home on two P4C800-ED machines without SP2 (downloaded later)
The promise SATA controller needed drivers, but the Intel chipset SATA
worked fine without F6

 

[Bob Davis]

It may depend on whether you have a copy of XP Pro with SP2 slipstreamed,
or the original XP with no SP's. If you have XP with SP2, you should be
able to install directly on a SATA device, and will only need a driver
from floppy if you intend to use RAID (obviously this is not applicable if
there is only 1 drive).

Yes, my copy of XP Pro is slipstreamed for SP2. I won't be using RAID at
this time, but would like to enable the ICH5R SATA RAID controller now
rather than later.

 

[Bob Davis]

I installed XP home on two P4C800-ED machines without SP2 (downloaded
later) The promise SATA controller needed drivers, but the Intel chipset
SATA worked fine without F6

After installing, did you see "Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller" under
"SCSI and RAID controllers" in Device Manager? I'm assuming that if ICH5R
(on-chip SATA) is enabled in the bios when XP SP2 is installed, it will pick
up the drive on that controller without f6'ing the drivers during install.

 

[Paul]

After installing, did you see "Intel 82801ER SATA RAID controller" under
"SCSI and RAID controllers" in Device Manager? I'm assuming that if ICH5R
(on-chip SATA) is enabled in the bios when XP SP2 is installed, it will pick
up the drive on that controller without f6'ing the drivers during install.

Read the "RAID Ready" section here. By enabling RAID now, with
one drive, you are supposed to be able to migrate later. If you
ever have plans of possibly using RAID for the boot drive in
the future, then this is the procedure you want to follow.

ftp://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/IAAR_Quick_Start.pdf

You can make up your own install recipe if you want, as long as
82801ER shows in Device Manager, and you are able to format and
install Windows on it. That is because, in order to install a
RAID driver, the enumeration requires the "ER" for the RAID
being there. So, as long as you can boot with the ICH5R in RAID
mode, you should be ready for migration in the future. It is
the people who leave the BIOS setting disabled, who cannot migrate
in the future, as they won't be able to install the RAID version
of the driver (the installer is sensitive to the BIOS RAID setting,
and a non-RAID ready install won't allow the RAID driver to be
installed - catch22).

Paul

 

[RBM]

No, I never set it up as raid so it's not listed under raid and scsi. What
Paul says makes a lot of sense and easier in the future. I tend to do things
ass backwards. On one of the machines, after loading xp on the Intel
controller, I enabled the promise controller and installed the drivers, then
transferred the boot drive and created a raid mirror, then removed the Intel
controller from the boot order and installed a third drive for storage on
it. Everything works fine, despite me.

 

[Bob Davis]

Read the "RAID Ready" section here. By enabling RAID now, with
one drive, you are supposed to be able to migrate later. If you
ever have plans of possibly using RAID for the boot drive in
the future, then this is the procedure you want to follow.

ftp://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa_raid/IAAR_Quick_Start.pdf

Great article. Thanks. The second option was the procedure I was planning
on following.

You can make up your own install recipe if you want, as long as
82801ER shows in Device Manager, and you are able to format and
install Windows on it. That is because, in order to install a
RAID driver, the enumeration requires the "ER" for the RAID
being there. So, as long as you can boot with the ICH5R in RAID
mode, you should be ready for migration in the future. It is
the people who leave the BIOS setting disabled, who cannot migrate
in the future, as they won't be able to install the RAID version
of the driver (the installer is sensitive to the BIOS RAID setting,
and a non-RAID ready install won't allow the RAID driver to be
installed - catch22).

Of course, as if "on-chip" SATA and RAID isn't enabled in the bios the
device is essentially not there, and XP won't see it. When I migrated from
PATA to single SATA on my 875 Gigabyte board, I decided to try to install it
on top of XP, even though everyone said it couldn't be done. Well, it can.
I enabled the controller and RAID function in the bios while the PATA drive
was still attached, installed the drivers after XP was booted the first time
after, shut it down, replaced the drives and cloned the old PATA to the SATA
with Norton Ghost 2003 (via floppy). It then booted as if the drive was
always there. Slick.

Thanks for the pointers.

 

[Bob Davis]

No, I never set it up as raid so it's not listed under raid and scsi. What
Paul says makes a lot of sense and easier in the future. I tend to do
things ass backwards. On one of the machines, after loading xp on the
Intel controller, I enabled the promise controller and installed the
drivers, then transferred the boot drive and created a raid mirror, then
removed the Intel controller from the boot order and installed a third
drive for storage on it. Everything works fine, despite me.

This works, but you're not using the ICH5R and are tapping from the EIDE
controller. I'm not sure what practical advantage or disadvantage this has,
performance or otherwise, but it is an option.