Installing to SATA

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Ridgeway
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Bill Ridgeway

I'm looking to install Windows XP onto a SATA HD. I've looked at several
web sites so have a theoretical (but not practical) understanding of what to
do.

Installing to a PATA HD is so easy. Why is installing to a SATA HD so
difficult? Why doesn't the Windows install disk recognise SATA? To get
round this you are expected to use a floppy disk: Technology that mainly
went out of use and hasn't been provided in new computers for several years.
There is, of course slipstreaming. It looks as though it should be fairly
straight forward (although I've also read of difficulties) but this, in
effect, is a workaround of a problem that just shouldn't exist.

Have I totally misread the situation?

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
 
Bill said:
I'm looking to install Windows XP onto a SATA HD. I've looked at several
web sites so have a theoretical (but not practical) understanding of what
to do.

Installing to a PATA HD is so easy. Why is installing to a SATA HD so
difficult? Why doesn't the Windows install disk recognise SATA? To get
round this you are expected to use a floppy disk: Technology that mainly
went out of use and hasn't been provided in new computers for several
years.
There is, of course slipstreaming. It looks as though it should be fairly
straight forward (although I've also read of difficulties) but this, in
effect, is a workaround of a problem that just shouldn't exist.

Have I totally misread the situation?
Click to expand...

Totally misread? Well, kinda sorta.

Installing onto a SATA drive is no different than installing onto a PATA
drive. The reason you need drive controller drivers in XP is that XP was
released in 2001, 7 (almost 8) years ago. SATA was not around then (or it
had just started and certainly SATA drives weren't common; I don't remember
the exact timeline and if you want one you can Google for it). In contrast,
Vista has many controller drivers included in it and Windows 7 will have
even more because SATA is now commonly in use. Expecting an operating
system that was written before a technology existed to have drivers for
that future technology is not logical, at least in *this* parallel
universe.

When XP first came out, floppy drives were still found on many computers
although IIRC they started being phased out shortly afterwards. Not all
motherboards made then could boot from a USB device. Again, if you want an
exact timeline you can research computer development using Google.

Your choice is to:

a) Have the drive controller drivers on a floppy;
b) Use a USB floppy drive if your computer will boot from a USB device and
doesn't have a built-in floppy drive;
c) Slipstream the drivers into your install CD. This is very easy,
particularly with something like nLite.

Malke
 
Malke said:
Your choice is to:

a) Have the drive controller drivers on a floppy;
b) Use a USB floppy drive if your computer will boot from a USB device and
doesn't have a built-in floppy drive;
c) Slipstream the drivers into your install CD. This is very easy,
particularly with something like nLite.
Click to expand...

Quicker...

d) check BIOS for SATA emulation mode options (IDE or ATA / AHCI). Set
it to IDE (or ATA) and install XP which should find the drive OK. Next
install the SATA (Raid) drivers, reboot then go in the BIOS and set to AHCI.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI>
 
Malke said:
Totally misread? Well, kinda sorta.

Installing onto a SATA drive is no different than installing onto a PATA
drive. The reason you need drive controller drivers in XP is that XP was
released in 2001, 7 (almost 8) years ago. SATA was not around then (or it
had just started and certainly SATA drives weren't common; I don't
remember
the exact timeline and if you want one you can Google for it). In
contrast,
Vista has many controller drivers included in it and Windows 7 will have
even more because SATA is now commonly in use. Expecting an operating
system that was written before a technology existed to have drivers for
that future technology is not logical, at least in *this* parallel
universe.

When XP first came out, floppy drives were still found on many computers
although IIRC they started being phased out shortly afterwards. Not all
motherboards made then could boot from a USB device. Again, if you want an
exact timeline you can research computer development using Google.

Your choice is to:

a) Have the drive controller drivers on a floppy;
b) Use a USB floppy drive if your computer will boot from a USB device and
doesn't have a built-in floppy drive;
c) Slipstream the drivers into your install CD. This is very easy,
particularly with something like nLite.

Malke
Click to expand...

Thanks Malke. That puts it into perspective.

Bill Ridgeway
 
Adrian said:
Quicker...

d) check BIOS for SATA emulation mode options (IDE or ATA / AHCI). Set
it to IDE (or ATA) and install XP which should find the drive OK. Next
install the SATA (Raid) drivers, reboot then go in the BIOS and set to
AHCI.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI>
Click to expand...

Good tip, thanks.

Also, in looking over my original reply I mentioned that the computer needed
to be able to boot from a USB device. Of course that isn't true in this
case; it just needs to be able to use a USB device in legacy mode.

Malke
 
Malke said:
Totally misread? Well, kinda sorta.

Installing onto a SATA drive is no different than installing onto a PATA
drive. The reason you need drive controller drivers in XP is that XP was
released in 2001, 7 (almost 8) years ago. SATA was not around then (or it
had just started and certainly SATA drives weren't common; I don't
remember
the exact timeline and if you want one you can Google for it). In
contrast,
Vista has many controller drivers included in it and Windows 7 will have
even more because SATA is now commonly in use. Expecting an operating
system that was written before a technology existed to have drivers for
that future technology is not logical, at least in *this* parallel
universe.

When XP first came out, floppy drives were still found on many computers
although IIRC they started being phased out shortly afterwards. Not all
motherboards made then could boot from a USB device. Again, if you want an
exact timeline you can research computer development using Google.

Your choice is to:

a) Have the drive controller drivers on a floppy;
b) Use a USB floppy drive if your computer will boot from a USB device and
doesn't have a built-in floppy drive;
c) Slipstream the drivers into your install CD. This is very easy,
particularly with something like nLite.

Malke
Click to expand...


Bill
Just to add to Malke's comments above...

There's a strong likelihood that you will not need to install auxiliary SATA
controller drivers when installing the XP OS onto a SATA HDD (naturally
we're talking about a non-RAID configuration here). This is especially true
if the motherboard involved is an Intel one since in virtually every case
the necessary SATA controller driver will be motherboard-integrated. With
some (but not all) AMD motherboards, an auxiliary SATA controller driver
*will* be needed to successfully install the OS onto the SATA HDD (the F6
process or using a slipstreamed XP installation CD including the necessary
driver as described by Malke).

So there is a good chance that installing the XP OS onto a SATA HDD will be
no different than installing that OS onto a PATA HDD.
Anna
 
Bill said:
I'm looking to install Windows XP onto a SATA HD. I've looked at several
web sites so have a theoretical (but not practical) understanding of what to
do.

Installing to a PATA HD is so easy. Why is installing to a SATA HD so
difficult? Why doesn't the Windows install disk recognise SATA?
Click to expand...


Remember SATA didn't really exist (and certainly wasn't commercially
available) when WinXP was initially developed.

To get
round this you are expected to use a floppy disk: Technology that mainly
went out of use and hasn't been provided in new computers for several years.
Click to expand...


USB Floppy drives are very inexpensive.





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Ok I have read all the posts on the subject and all I did was set my
bios to run the sata drive. The chipset is intel 945 which is a little older
but I just read the instructions for the Motherboard and it was no problem
at all setting up xp. Did the same for Vista. If the motherboard bios does
not
support sata then a driver must be used and I am not talking about a raid
setup.
the is a different animal.
 
Likwise have installed dozens of machines with SATA disks, and very rarely
had to resort to special drivers. Main point is to make sure that AHCI mode
(sometimes called Native Mode) is OFF in the BIOS. I usually then find that a
DOS bootdisk will work fine, as will the XP setup CD.

The one thing I really wish the mobo manufacturers would do is to produce a
RELIABLE CD-boot option. All too often the CD boot fails, and when it does,
instead of announcing the failure the BIOS 'falls through' to booting off the
hard disk. If you are sysprepping a disk-image for a rollout and this happens
it can mean the need to redo a lot of work.

Floppies may have been slow, but the boot option worked reliably.
 
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