SATA installation

[cobol]

I've just had a computer re-formatted and Windows XP re-loaded by the local computer shop, normally a task I would do myself but was time limited on this occasion. The computer is a SFF AMD S939 with a 300GB SATA hard drive.

The installation was done whilst I was in the shop. During the install, SATA drivers were not loaded. Last time I did this I had to install a floppy disk which came with the motherboard and press F6 at windows install.

When I questioned this, I was made to look a complete No swearing! in front of the rest of the people in the shop - which is fair enough if I was asking a stupid question.

I've done some further investigation, it would seem that having to load SATA drivers depends on the motherboard, some have on-board SATA drivers.

Two questions:

1) Is my conclusion correct regarding SATA drivers?

2) Why does the the HDD show up as a removable drive in the right hand of the taskbar (systems tray?) as if it was a removable drive, like a memory stick?

In the 'safely remove hardware' screen, the HDD shows up as 'WDC3000 at location 0', location 0 being the primary ATA channel according to device manager.

 

[jeffa123]

In your Bios is SATA set to IDE or Raid? It sounds like it has been set to Raid by mistake. No driver is required when SATA is being used as IDE I/O. I believe the person whom setup your system set it up as a RAID without thinking about the fact that you can set the SATA to IDE Volume control.

 

[rpstewart]

2) Why does the the HDD show up as a removable drive in the right hand of the taskbar (systems tray?) as if it was a removable drive, like a memory stick?

SATA is a hot swappable protocol so the driver support the removal of SATA drives in the same way as memory sticks. However if you try to remove it you won't be able to because Windows will always have files open which prevent the removal of the disk.