Gerald Bramwell said:
Hi,
Is it possible to have a SATA drive set as the first drive?
Yes, though there may be limitations imposed by the motherboard or BIOS, not
by Windows.
I want to be able to re install Windows XP home onto the SATA drive then
have the IDE drives follow on.
Definitely do-able. I have several systems configured this way.
Any tips or pointers would be much appreciated.
Read the manual for your motherboard. Some motherboards require specific
settings to enable both PATA and SATA ports, some require nothing at all.
Some boards use SATA controller chips that XP needs drivers to recognise -
many don't.
And there can be other issues.
My Thinkpad, for example, requires a SATA driver to run XP in AHCI mode, and
ACHI is enabled via the BIOS. The driver is available as a download from
Lenovo, you put it on floppy and make it available by pressing F6 when
prompted during an early part of XP Setup. The floppy is read, the driver
identified and accepted... and then you get a message that there's no hard
disk found.
What's necessary is to go back to the BIOS, shift *out* of AHCI mode, ignore
the driver, and install normally. Later, once XP is installed, reboot to
the BIOS and turn AHCI on.. .and there's no problem. The Vista install
ignores this nonsense.
Otherwise, plug the SATA drive into Port #0, and don't attach *any* other
drives during install other than the optical disk. While not strictly
necessary, this will prevent XP from deciding that your boot drive is
actually F: or something, something you won't realize to the first reboot.
Usually that arises with multi-port card readers, which should also be
disconnected at initial setup.
HTH
-pk