Time to upgrade my hard drive

mogwai · 1 Oct 2006 at 18:07

I am looking into upgrading my hard drive to a larger one. I am thinking of getting a Sata II so that I can use it as part of my new rig which I will put together next year.

I have one quick question, when I install the hard drive and then format it and load the OS etc do I need to do the "press F6 to install 3rd party drivers" if I am not connecting it to the raid controller on my motherboard?

smids · 1 Oct 2006 at 19:20

Depends entirely on the controller - some controllers can emulate IDE mode until the drivers are installed e.g. nForce4 , but some require the drivers. I'm not sure which is the case for your motherboard SATA controller.

mogwai · 1 Oct 2006 at 19:52

It has a Promise SATA controller. There a 2 non raid sata connectors and 2 sata connectors for RAID.

http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=12&l3=30&model=175&modelmenu=1

mogwai · 1 Oct 2006 at 21:13

It has a Promise SATA controller. There a 2 non raid sata connectors and 2 sata connectors for RAID.

http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=12&l3=30&model=175&modelmenu=1

smids · 1 Oct 2006 at 23:33

Holy double post batman! Ermm, I don't think you can do a driverless install on that controller. Might want to check out the Promise forums or something for confirmation though.

rpstewart · 2 Oct 2006 at 11:39

I've done a driverless install on one of those boards but I was using the Intel Southbridge SATA ports for it.

The only time I used the Promise ports was for extra storage disks added after the windows install and I had to load drivers within windows before the drives would be recognised (even with them in IDE mode in the BIOS). That suggests that the controller is not fully emulating IDE hence it's unlikely that a driverless install would be possible on that controller.