Do SATA drives require a floppy?

[Renegade23216]

In the past, I configured a system at CyberPower, and I did not include a floppy. When it arrived, I was unable to install an operating system, because the computer did not recognize the SATA drive. The SATA drive came with a floppy to install it in DOS before I could load windows. Sine I didn't have a floppy drive, it was impossible to use.

Have things changed? Do the new SATA drives allow for installation without floppy? How does it work now?

I hate floppy drives, and prefer not to have one in my new system. Just wondering if I can make use of SATA technology without having a floppy drive, and how.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I know what you mean. I installed a floppy on my machine, even though you can't see it. It's two bays below the fan controller on the left side. I used a zalman hd cooler, and mounted it backwards. I only use it for BIOS upgrades, so I can get to it if I need to. Works great like that.

 

[Bozo Galora]

XP SP2 has generic SATA drivers for NATIVE SATA ports (not Marvel Promise or SI), you can update after install

 

[V00D00]

It's not a problem with the sata drives, it's a problem with windows xp not loading serial ata drives when you install windows. SATA wasn't out when XP came out, so it doesn't have drivers for it.

As bozo said, SP2 disks can support a few, but if you want to use an older disk, or use ports that are not native to the northbridge then you'll need to slipstream your xp disk with the drivers included.

Everyone hates floppies, but you can't do anything because microsoft won't update it's windows installer to read off usb flash drives or anything like that. Maybe this will change when vista or sp3 comes out. Maybe not...

 

[Renegade23216]

Makes sense. Thank you for the info.