Is there anything "hard" about installing a SATA Drive in the MSI Neo2 Plat?

[Caveman]

Should have the board in a few days and was wondering if I need a floppy to install the drivers or is the MB "smart enough" to recognize the drive after it's installed?

 

[BoboKatt]

Man I would love to know too as I am waiting on the same deal. Got my Neo2 and running IDE now but wondering what will happen when I install my new raptor SATA drive. Can you boot from it or is it a pain to get the bios to boot from SATA first? i have not even looked at my manual and before folks start yelling.. lol I will do so

 

[Ioo]

to install Windows from scratch to a SATA drive you will need one of two things:

1. A floppy drive
2. A copy of Windows with your SATA drivers hacked in to install as OEM equipment.

If you want to try making your own custom windows CD (you can even slipstream in servicepacks so you dont need to install them seperatly) then look at this link. It uses the nForce2 drivers as examples, but you can do it with any drivers, even drivers for video cards, gamepads/joysticks, and other hardware.

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8892

 

[overclock]

Check out this forum over at msfn.org:

http://www.msfn.org/board/inde...owtopic=27674&st=0

He did it with this exact same board (which I will be getting on Friday hopefully). Come on FedEx man!

 

[Caveman]

Why does this seem so ridiculously hard? If the board supports SATA, you'd think to just plug and go... I've got a 74 Gig Raptor that I want to boot from and an IDE as a data drive... no RAID here... Anyone have more info?

 

[Caveman]

Just want to do a simple installation of a drive. Can't I just put the floppy in the drive and go?

 

[Spikesoldier]

if you boot from IDE and when windows tries to install it, it doesnt have the driver. use your driver CD taht came with your montherboard to install it. this is in a windows environment.

if you want to install a clean installation of windows onto the raptor, you will have to have the driver, but on a floppy because thats how windows setup will only be able to see the drive.

as others have said you can integrate this driver that you need, among others, and even windows updates onto a homemade windows setup CD.

 

[Ioo]

Originally posted by: Caveman
Why does this seem so ridiculously hard? If the board supports SATA, you'd think to just plug and go... I've got a 74 Gig Raptor that I want to boot from and an IDE as a data drive... no RAID here... Anyone have more info?

The motherboard may support SATA, but Windows does not have built in SATA drivers like it does for IDE. So even though your motherboard shows your SATA drive working all nice and happy, Windows has no clue how to talk to it, or that its even there.

So you need to use a floppy and give windows the drivers when you first install windows. Or build them into the actuall windows install program like we posted above. The simplest way is just to use a floppy, and it will all work just fine. Its the same process you use to have to go through with SCSI drives and such. The next build of Windows will likely have the SATA drivers built in, but until then, the answer is floppy drive.

 

[Caveman]

Thanks Spike Soldier... I "think" this is starting to make sense. The tenor of the posts made it sound like the ONLY way to install the SATA drivers was from an integrated CD...

Now...

If I understand you right, I can just plug up my MoBo with the Raptor as the primary (boot) HD and the IDE (data) disk as the secondary drive and when I boot my machine for the first time and try installing Win XP, the OS will prompt me for a driver on my floppy before dumping the OS onto the Drive.

The part that's still foggy is the "can't get there from here" question in my mind...

If the OS can't recognize the drive without having the driver from the floppy, then how is it going to prompt me for the driver???

Seems paradoxical.

 

[Caveman]

OK IOO...

Looks like we posted at the same time... So I didn't see your post till afer I finished mine. Thanks for helping...

Still have 2 questions:

1) If the SATA drive is the boot disk, will windows be smart enough to know that it doesn't have a driver for the Raptor? 3 years ago on my last system build, I don't remember having to load IDE drivers... It seemed Windows not only recognized a drive was plugged in, but it installed the driver it had and all this was transparent to me.

Now, if I understand what you are saying, Windows will recognize the Raptor, but will know it can't talk properly so it will prompt me for a driver???

2) Seems like in one of the zillions of updates that Win XP requires, that the new drivers could be put in so we don't have to mess with a floppy.

 

[Ioo]

1. Turn on computer
2. Put Windows CD in drive
3. Set mobo to boot from your SATA drive first and CD drive second in BIOS. If your IDE drive has windows on it, you need to make sure the CD drive is before the IDE drive in the boot order.
4. Restart computer
5. Put floppy drive with SATA drivers in floppy drive
6. When Windows setup is running at the bottom of the screen you will see a prompt "Press F6 to install RAID or SCSI drivers"
7. Push F6
8. Navigate the menu to the SATA driver
9. Continue installing windows as normal

 

[Ioo]

Originally posted by: Caveman
2) Seems like in one of the zillions of updates that Win XP requires, that the new drivers could be put in so we don't have to mess with a floppy.

Windows updates dont update the installtion routine on your CD...

 

[overclock]

Caveman,

Have you ever installed Windows? When you put the Windows CD in the drive and choose to boot from it there is a message at the bottom that says "Press F6 to blah, blah, blah." So you press F6 and wait for Windows to load some basic stuff. Then the setup will prompt you for the floppy. And yes IT HAS TO BE ON A FLOPPY! I cannot be on a USB flash drive, CD, DVD, nothing buy a floppy. Come on Microsoft, get real.

Here are some instructions.

 

[Caveman]

Originally posted by: Ioo
1. Turn on computer
2. Put Windows CD in drive
3. Set mobo to boot from your SATA drive first and CD drive second in BIOS. If your IDE drive has windows on it, you need to make sure the CD drive is before the IDE drive in the boot order.
4. Restart computer
5. Put floppy drive with SATA drivers in floppy drive
6. When Windows setup is running at the bottom of the screen you will see a prompt "Press F6 to install RAID or SCSI drivers"
7. Push F6
8. Navigate the menu to the SATA driver
9. Continue installing windows as normal

Again thanks for your help here... This is a new system build so Win XP will not be on the IDE drive. Been out of the loop for a while -- my computer skills are rusty...
Comments/questions as I try to see into the theory and beyond the cookbook:
1) Right : )
2) Got it. I assume I could do this step as 5.5 as well, but it's done here just to "get it out of the way".
3) Seems counterintuitive to set the primary drive to somehting that can't be read but... I guess Windows will just go right to the CD since it can't "talk" to the Raptor?
4) I can do that : )
5) YUP : )
6) Setup coming off the CD after it "skips" past the Raptor like it did in step 3.
7) OK : )
8) Browse to driver I guess... I can do this...
9) Hopefully "normal" will be faster with the Raptor than the IDE...

Originally posted by: Ioo

Originally posted by: Caveman
2) Seems like in one of the zillions of updates that Win XP requires, that the new drivers could be put in so we don't have to mess with a floppy.

Windows updates dont update the installtion routine on your CD...

I should have said service packs... Seem like SR1 or SR2 could have easily fixed this... Weird.

Hey Overclock... Thanks for the link.

 

[rforum]

Here are some instructions that I used for my Neo Platinum - perhaps they are not so different for Neo2. Hopefully it will help you. There is a lot of good info here. I would get the latest BIOS and board drivers off the Internet - mine came with outdated software.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=208146

Lots of good stuff here too:

http://msihq.designlab.info/

 

[imported_Molasses]

I built a SATA Neo Plat (754 pin) and it didn't require F6 to load the SATA drivers. As long as you're not using RAID, the SATA drive was picked up without needing drivers from a floppy. I would think it's the same for the Neo2 Plat.

 

[snerdini]

Originally posted by: Molasses
I built a SATA Neo Plat (754 pin) and it didn't require F6 to load the SATA drivers. As long as you're not using RAID, the SATA drive was picked up without needing drivers from a floppy. I would think it's the same for the Neo2 Plat.

Same here for an Asus K8N - no SATA drivers required (fresh installation of Windows).

 

[TheBoy]

I installed Windows on my raptor using system in spec, at no point did i need a floppy. One thing to note, if you start getting disk errors in the event viewer uninstall the nVidia IDE drivers and use the MS ones, that fixed all my hard drive and Optical drive problems

Edit: I said spec, i meant sig

 

[bicchi]

This post is kind of related to the topic. Do I need to go to the bios to set something if I am just installing one SATA (WD Raptor) drive plus one DVD/CD-RW combo drive (Primary IDE).
Please describe what needs to be set in the bios for this combination to work?

 

[TheBoy]

nothing needs to be set in the BIOS, just plug them in and they'll be recognised

 

[lepixz]

So am I going to have to buy a floppy drive for my new computer if I'm using a raptor?

 

[TheBoy]

only if you want to use RAID i think

 

[Waylay00]

I'd still buy a floppy just to be safe. They're only like $10.

 

[shakkattack]

ok i done all the f6 jargen drivers loaded ok ..........blah blah blah ............get to the bit continue to load windows and then it says ..............the windows licence agreement press f 8 to agree esc to exit and page up page down all the buttons work except f 8 to agree wtf? this is a legal copy of xp pro with service pack 2 helppppppppppp?