SATA boot drive with A7N8X-E- need advice please.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peregrin
  • Start date Start date
P

Peregrin

I was about to turn on my new (fourth) machine, with the A7N8X-E and a
[74] GB Raptor, when I "discovered" that SATA is not as simple as PATA.

What do I do, when I install XP, for the SATA drive to be recognized, and
then partitioned, formatted, etc? According to the MOBO manual, there seem
to be a SATA driver on the MOBO CD, but I need to have XP installed to
read the CD. Looks like a Catch 22. But I assume it can't be, so what am I
missing?

Could someone point me to a web page that gives the steps for such an
install? I can find my way around with fdisk, partitioning, cloning a HD
on another, etc. But this is my first "encounter" with a SATA drive, so I
can use all help and advice to deal with the differences.

Thank you very much.

Peregrin
 
any driver would be for using SATA drives as a RAID array.
Just connect the drive to SATA1, boot from the windowsxp cd,
and go from there.
nat

Peregrin said:
I was about to turn on my new (fourth) machine, with the A7N8X-E and a
[74] GB Raptor, when I "discovered" that SATA is not as simple as PATA.

What do I do, when I install XP, for the SATA drive to be recognized, and
then partitioned, formatted, etc? According to the MOBO manual, there seem
to be a SATA driver on the MOBO CD, but I need to have XP installed to
read the CD. Looks like a Catch 22. But I assume it can't be, so what am I
missing?

Could someone point me to a web page that gives the steps for such an
install? I can find my way around with fdisk, partitioning, cloning a HD
on another, etc. But this is my first "encounter" with a SATA drive, so I
can use all help and advice to deal with the differences.

Thank you very much.

Peregrin
Click to expand...
 
Not quite, the sata driver may be required whether using raid or not.
If you boot from winxp cd and you get a msg re no hd, you know you need sata
drivers.
You will either have to copy them from cd to floppy, or download from
manu.site to floppy.
When you commence the installation of xp, quite early in the process there
is a msg re install of any exteranal drivers, at this point F6, then insert
floppy as req. Once completed continue install. If you miss the option, the
install will fail, and you have to start again.

Bill T said:
any driver would be for using SATA drives as a RAID array.
Just connect the drive to SATA1, boot from the windowsxp cd,
and go from there.
nat

Peregrin said:
I was about to turn on my new (fourth) machine, with the A7N8X-E and a
[74] GB Raptor, when I "discovered" that SATA is not as simple as PATA.

What do I do, when I install XP, for the SATA drive to be recognized, and
then partitioned, formatted, etc? According to the MOBO manual, there seem
to be a SATA driver on the MOBO CD, but I need to have XP installed to
read the CD. Looks like a Catch 22. But I assume it can't be, so what am I
missing?

Could someone point me to a web page that gives the steps for such an
install? I can find my way around with fdisk, partitioning, cloning a HD
on another, etc. But this is my first "encounter" with a SATA drive, so I
can use all help and advice to deal with the differences.

Thank you very much.

Peregrin
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Unzip the Silicon Image SATA 1.0.50 drivers from ASUS's website
(look in the A7N8X-E's downloads section), then copy everything
in the root directory (there are 2 subdirs called Linux and GUI
you don't need these) onto a floppy.

Use this floppy during the install (either hit F6 while XP install
starts or if there's no other IDE drives, it will ask for a driver disk).
 
Unzip the Silicon Image SATA 1.0.50 drivers from ASUS's website
(look in the A7N8X-E's downloads section), then copy everything
in the root directory (there are 2 subdirs called Linux and GUI
you don't need these) onto a floppy.

Use this floppy during the install (either hit F6 while XP install
starts or if there's no other IDE drives, it will ask for a driver disk).
Click to expand...
Looks like it's going to be easier than I tought it might be. Thank you
very much for the good input folks, just what I was looking for. I'm on my
way to try it.
 
There is another way to do this :)

You could also make a slipstream disk using XPCREATE (free util) also
slipstream sp2 whilst your at it and then the next time you do a reinstall
of windows it will have the drivers as standard without all that tedious
messing about with floppies ;)
 
Back
Top