HELP! SATA driver help needed

galadial · 22 Nov 2006 at 19:08

I have a Gigabyte DS3 with a Seagate 320GB HDD. I;ve been told I need to install the SATA driver to get the OS to recognise the HDD during windows XP install. Where do I find the SATA driver and what is it called?

Windows seems to be installing itself quite nicely, do I need to install the driver and can I install it at a later date?

Not really sure what's going on - can someone point me in the right direction?

G

rpstewart · 22 Nov 2006 at 19:16

You only need a driver if the SATA controller doesn't emulate normal IDE mode or if your disks are in a RAID array. Most modern boards (yours included) will work fine with a single disk with no user intervention.

Since your install is progressing nicely you'll not need a driver at this point. There will be drivers for the motherboard on the CD that came with it which will cover things like the chipset, USB controllers, SATA controllers etc but they go on once Windows is installed.

galadial · 22 Nov 2006 at 19:20

rpstewart said:
You only need a driver if the SATA controller doesn't emulate normal IDE mode or if your disks are in a RAID array. Most modern boards (yours included) will work fine with a single disk with no user intervention.

Since your install is progressing nicely you'll not need a driver at this point. There will be drivers for the motherboard on the CD that came with it which will cover things like the chipset, USB controllers, SATA controllers etc but they go on once Windows is installed.

Great. Thanks for the super quick reply!

hartgeh3 · 22 Nov 2006 at 19:54

Im thinking of getting the same mobo, but have 2 Sata drives, is it best to install the SATA drviers before XP installation or after with the mobo cd?

rpstewart · 22 Nov 2006 at 19:58

You will need to install the drivers off the mobo CD regardless of how you install XP.

As I said earlier you'll only need to use a driver floppy during the XP install if you configure the drives as a RAID array.