Asus P4P800-E + Plextor 712SA + 2 SATA HD's?

[imported_Cota]

Ok, I've just read enough SATA posts in these forums to know that I shouldn't have played with SATA. I'm sorry! I thought it was just better IDE.

Here's what I bought:

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
Plextor 712SA
Western Digital 200gig SATA drives X2

Here's what I didn't buy:
Floppy drive
SATA controller card

First question I guess is: Does the Asus P4P800-E have native support for SATA? I gather that will save me from getting a floppy drive if it does. I've read conflicting information in this forum. The Asus website says this:

"ICH5R with Integrated SATA and RAID 0
Intel is the world's first chipset maker to integrate Serial ATA (SATA) and RAID 0, 1 functions into the South Bridge. The latest ICH5R chipset now delivers 150MB/s fast data transfer (SATA) and striping performance to enhance computing efficiency."

Does that mean native SATA support?


Second question is: Am I going to have trouble installing Windows XP from the 712SA drive?

So if the 712SA is going to be a problem with fresh installs I wonder if it would be best to try and return it and get the 712A instead? Will that one work with my motherboard and be able to be used to install a fresh XP?

Or if the 712SA is ok for installing XP, then get a pci controller card and put the two harddrives on the motherboard and the DVD on the new controller card?

Thanks,

-Cota

 

[MustISO]

There's 4 SATA connections on the board so everything can be connected to the motherboard.
Windows XP should boot fine from the plextor but I've never used a SATA optical drive so I could be wrong.

If you don't need the SATA DVD drive, then get the ATA version if it's easy to exchange.

For the SATA HD support, you may need to load the SATA drivers during the XP install. For that you need either a floppy drive or a Slipstreamed Windows XP CD with your SATA drivers already copied over.

 

[imported_Cota]

Originally posted by: MustISO
There's 4 SATA connections on the board so everything can be connected to the motherboard.
Windows XP should boot fine from the plextor but I've never used a SATA optical drive so I could be wrong.

On this board there are two SATA connectors and two RAID SATA connectors, are you saying that I can use one of the raid connectors as a third non-raid connection? An option in the bios maybe?

Thanks,

-Cota

 

[airfoil]

Connect the Plextor to the non RAID SATA channel.

Connect the Hard drives to the 2 RAID channels. If you're not doing a RAID setup, you probably have an option to disable RAID from the BIOS. If you are installing a RAID config, you'll need to install the SATA RAID drivers by hitting F6 during initial XP install - look for a message which goes something like 'Hit F6 to install 3rd party drivers'.

One niggling question I still have is the whether the mobo has the capability to boot from an SATA optical drive - my guess is you wont have problems.

 

[imported_Cota]

Sweet Jesus! That is good news. Thanks, the both of you. I've went from 'what have I done' to 'everything should be fine'. I'll finish putting it together and leave a note here whether or not I got the SATA DVD to boot.

Edit: Ok, the system is up. You can boot from the SATA DVD on this motherboard. Putting the two harddrives on the RAID SATA (raid disabled) didn't work however. It could be that you need to do the floppy/driver thing. On the CD that came with the motherboard there looks to be SATA and RAID drivers. Seperately. You may need to load just the SATA drivers to use those connectors as SATA non-raid. I didn't have a floppy drive to test that though. So I ended up putting one of the harddrives on the non-raid SATA connectors along with the DVD player. Windows XP setup could find the one harddrive that way, and the other was available after XP was installed. So everything is groovy! Cheers.

Thanks again,

-Cota