Installing Windows XP on SATA II Drive...

sugoi · 18 Jan 2006 at 10:06

I just recently purchased a new SATA II Drive, a Western Digital 250GB one to be exact...

I want to install Windows XP on to the SATA II Drive instead of the IDE, but it says something about incompatible Windows XP partition... i did a lot of research, and it seems that I need to get a Floppy Disk and put the SATA Drivers onto it and then load them up before installing Windows on a SATA drive...

My motherboard is A8N SLI Premium, but it doesn't seem to have a floppy with the drivers on it... i take it my windows cd is fairly old, a few years so it probably doesn't have the drivers on it when booting from CD....

i saw this on the Asus Website: Silicon Image 3114 SATA RAID driver V1.1.9.9 for Windows XP(WHQL)/2K/2003. .... does that sound like the drivers i need to put onto a floppy?

MarcLister · 18 Jan 2006 at 10:55

Yes those look like the drivers you need. Put them onto the floppy and when you start the Windows install it will say "Press F6 to install SATA devices" or something similar. Press F6 and when the install starts proper it will ask you for the drivers, put the floppy in and it should read them.

I thought that with nf4 motherboards you didn't need to make the drivers available yourself? I thought that the drivers were automatically found?

sugoi · 18 Jan 2006 at 11:04

hmm thats what i thought too... im at work right now, and just made the floppy, so hopefully when i get home, i can install windows onto the SATA-II...

MarcLister · 18 Jan 2006 at 11:20

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have the floppy ready in case something does go wrong. It should be OK with the nf4 board though so you should be OK. Can you post back when you find out? I've bought some new components and will be putting them together on Saturday afternoon/evening when I get back to Uni. It'd be helpful to know if I need a SATA driver floppy pre-prepared or not. Thanks.

Skilldibop · 18 Jan 2006 at 14:44

Afaik it says pres F6 to install 3rd party SCSI or RAID drivers. This is only applicable if your running the disks in NVRAID. If it's just a straight disk it should install happily same as on an IDE disk. Tho if for some reason XP can't see it the drivers can be installed off the modo driver disk, or should be able to. Might not work if you have a SATA Optical drive tho

sugoi · 18 Jan 2006 at 15:05

the thing is, i just plugged the SATA II Drive into the motherboard like i did with a previous one, but at that time i already had windows on an IDE Drive, that SATA II was just used for extra storage, now i bought another SATA II drive intending to put Windows XP on it, i booted the windows CD at startup and did the partitions and stuff, created a new 30GB partition on the 250GB NEW HDD, and tried to install windows onto it but it said "It needed to write to the Hard Disk but it was not a Windows XP compatible Partition".. so i checked with the IDE and it works with IDE without any hassle, but seems like i need to install these drivers for Windows to be installed onto the SATA Drives... will try it when i get home...

If i had a later Windows, it might have had SATA drivers on it... but this Windows came with an old PC about 3-4 years ago... doesn't have SP2 either...

Skilldibop · 18 Jan 2006 at 15:59

sounds more like a SATA config issue. Have a mosey in the HDD forum. If you've previously booted from IDE sometimes there are tweaks need doing. your partition Has to be primary of your gonna boot from it.