Some SATA Questions

[sirstarvsalot]

I am about to buy a WD 36 GB Raptor HD, but first I just need to make sure of a few things. I know pretty much nothing about SATA and how it works, so these are probably some really stupid questions. Basically all I want to know is if I can just plug my Raptor in like a regular ATA HD. Or so I have to run it in RAID mode or do anything special other than just plug it in. Thanks in advance.

 

[billyjak]

You need to have a sata port on your mobo or a controller card that supports sata, you have to load the Sata drivers when you install windows by pressing the F6 key and it will ask to install 3rd party drivers.
You do not have to raid the raptor to get it to work.
You'll need a sata cable to plug it into the motherboard or controller card.

 

[sirstarvsalot]

Ok, I have an sata cable and port on my mobo (asus p4c800), the only thing I am still a little confused about is the installing of the drivers, but I assume I'll be able to figure that out when the time comes. Thanks alot.

 

[fredtam]

If you are running a single rapror on sata port 1 or 2. You do not need to load drivers. Plug it in and proceed with OS install.

 

[sirstarvsalot]

that is good news. When would I need to install drivers? Because I am going to be running the raptor as a my main drive, then a regular ATA drive as my backup....

 

[Shagga]

Originally posted by: fredtam
If you are running a single rapror on sata port 1 or 2. You do not need to load drivers. Plug it in and proceed with OS install.

Correct. It's only if you want to install RAID or SCSI drivers in the first instance...

 

[fredtam]

Originally posted by: sirstarvsalot
that is good news. When would I need to install drivers? Because I am going to be running the raptor as a my main drive, then a regular ATA drive as my backup....

The only drivers you will need to install are the chipset drivers which are on the cd that comes with your mobo. Do this right after your OS install. Then install drivers such as audio and others. Once your all done update the bios.

 

[MDE]

To be a bit more specific, you need the SATA drivers on a floppy disk. Once you boot off the XP CD, it'll flash a message saying "Press F6 to install third party SCSI or RAID drivers." Hit F6 there and tell it to load the correct drivers off the floppy, and then proceed with the installation as normal. I would unplug any IDE hard drives in the system while installing because XP sees SATA as SCSI, and will assign the first IDE drive C and so on, then give SCSI the next letter, and then removable drives (CD\DVD drives). If you want the IDE drives to show up as the next letter after the Raptor you can chang the letters in Computer Management (in Administrative Tools).

 

[fredtam]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
To be a bit more specific, you need the SATA drivers on a floppy disk. Once you boot off the XP CD, it'll flash a message saying "Press F6 to install third party SCSI or RAID drivers." Hit F6 there and tell it to load the correct drivers off the floppy, and then proceed with the installation as normal. I would unplug any IDE hard drives in the system while installing because XP sees SATA as SCSI, and will assign the first IDE drive C and so on, then give SCSI the next letter, and then removable drives (CD\DVD drives). If you want the IDE drives to show up as the next letter after the Raptor you can chang the letters in Computer Management (in Administrative Tools).

False. Provided he is using the ICH5 (southbridge) sata controller it is integrated into the chipset. The only reasons he would need to supply drivers are

1. He will be using raid. He is not. Also unless its the "E" version raid isn't supported on the southbridge so he still couldn't provide drivers for it. The only drivers
available for the ICH5R are raid drivers.


2. He is using the silicon image sata controller. Then yes he would need to supply drivers because its considered a pci add in device but given the choice between the dedicated bandwidth with the ICH5 (or ICH5R)and using the SI controller that shares the PCI bus the obvious choice is to use the ICH5 southbridge.