SATA drives

[Amor]

I need to know if this is a common occurence or an isolated incident.

When I boot my computer I see a flash that shows it can see the wd hard drive. However, when trying to install windows xp it says I do not have a hard drive installed on my computer.

I have the small sata wire hooked up to the sata 1 hookup on the mobo. The other sata connection is the power cord.

I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to proceed from here.

Any insight will be gratefully appreciated. This might be a mix of hardware/software issue but I figured the more minds that see this the better informed I will be.

 

[Sheriff]

Quick Search would help

 

[Amor]

This is only my second build in my entire life. Where would I get those sata drivers? I happened to get my wd raptor from newegg and was not given any floppy disks with the order. Can I download them off of the net too?

 

[mitchafi]

They are the SATA RAID Drivers on the Asus K8V resource CD that comes with the motherboard. Not the Promise controller. There will be a makedisk.exe. Make a floppy, and then when installing windows, hit F6 when asked if you have any third party SCSI/storage devices. That's where the floppy comes in. You can also download them on the asus website.

 

[Amor]

Thanks a ton for your insight. I am not quite sure how I was supposed to proceed without having another computer to help me set up that floppy first. Personally, I think they should have made a cdrom by now that could make all the needs for floppy disks obsolete.

But then again, perhaps I expect to much out of the 'establishment.'

 

[luco]

So is it impossible to install SATA drive without floppy?

I'm asking cause I don't plan on buying floppy drive for my next build.

 

[Amor]

Luco, the way I was able to do it was use my old computer to create that floppy disk from the cdrom that came with my mobo.

I just so happened to have an old floppy available and was able to use it to help set up this system. Win xp finally acknowledges that there is a hard drive on my computer.

I hate to say it, but I believe the floppy drive establishment has their hands in this situation (it seems it is still necessary to have a stupid floppy drive to build a computer using windows xp-I say stupid because frankly floppy drives should be obsolete by now).

Take care and good luck with your build.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: luco
So is it impossible to install SATA drive without floppy?

I'm asking cause I don't plan on buying floppy drive for my next build.

It might be possible. My K8V Deluxe can force a USB drive to emulate a floppy, according to the BIOS, so that could work (haven't tried it myself). People with the Chaintech nForce3 250 boards are reporting that they don't need to supply SATA drivers at all, even for Win2000.

Bigger picture: unless you have special reasons for choosing SATA, you might want to stick with PATA. If it ain't broke... The 74GB WD Raptor is an attractive drive and only comes in SATA so far, so that could be a valid reason, but it appears that the other SATA drives on the market have PATA equivalents almost across the board.

 

[UnTech]

Originally posted by: luco
So is it impossible to install SATA drive without floppy?

I'm asking cause I don't plan on buying floppy drive for my next build.

No, it is not impossible to install SATA without a floppy. My motherboard has the Intel 875 chipset and has SATA built into the northbridge. I simply just assembled the computer put my Raptor on the SATA and installed Win xp off the CD.

 

[luco]

Well, I'm getting Asus K8V Basic. I think I'll just hook the floppy from my current PC to the new one temporarily without removing it from the old case if possible. (I'm trying to sell my current system this weekend). It will be like jumper cables between two cars. lol

 

[Algere]

Originally posted by: UnTech

Originally posted by: luco
So is it impossible to install SATA drive without floppy?

I'm asking cause I don't plan on buying floppy drive for my next build.

No, it is not impossible to install SATA without a floppy. My motherboard has the Intel 875 chipset and has SATA built into the northbridge. I simply just assembled the computer put my Raptor on the SATA and installed Win xp off the CD.

You CAN install WinXP without a floppy if you "slipstream" the drivers into a copy of WinXP.

OT: How did you install a SATA drive without SATA controller drivers? esp. when WinXP doesn't come native with SATA controller drivers? And AFAIK the 875 chipset came after the initial release of WinXP. Did you do a Windows Upgrade and not a full install?

 

[sdlangers]

just for a note:

i was building a machine with sata drives and had no fdd

i had a usb external fdd - and this worked for booting up things like memtest86 - however, during the winxp installation when you press f6 to install the drivers and the prompt comes up - it would not recognize the usb FDD - i had to pull a regular one out of an old pc