Re: Making a SATA drive the boot drive

From: BobV (robowa_at_comcast.net)
Date: 12/17/04 

Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:45:41 -0800

"Bob Harris" <rharris270[SPAM]@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OIIu3Q94EHA.4008@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> SATA is newer than XP, so it can not automatically detect these disks.
>
> Instead, you need to press F6 early in the XP installation (watch the
> bottom of the screen). Then, you need to have the SATA drivers on a
> floppy. They must be on a floppy, not on a CD. The XP installer will
> take what it needs. OR, it will present you with a choice, if there are
> multiple drivers (e.g., 98, 2000, XP); choose XP.

I am doing this
>
> But, before you even think about installing XP, you need to determine
> whether the SATA controller is also a RAID contoller. My ASUS P4S8X has a
> combined RAID/SATA controller. So, I first needed to make a "RAID array".
> But, I did not want to link two disks, so I used the custom RAID options
> to make an array of one disk. The ASUS manual helped, but only a little
> about this important step.

This is difficult to tell, but I think it is a combined RAID/SATA
controller. I see no way to make a RAID array with only one disk. There is
no option to make a custom RAID array. The ASUS manual is no help at all.
>
> An interseting aside: Until I made an array, even the Seagate disk prep
> tools could not see the disk. However, in your case it sounds like your
> motherboard is handling some of this for you, since you mention that XP
> can see the disk, after XP is installed on an IDE disk. Or, it could be
> that it knows that one one SATA disk must be in an array of its own, or
> maybe you do not have a RAID contoller.
>
Not sure

> One other item I recall about the installation process: I needed to go
> into the BIOS and set te boot options to include:
>
> IDE hard drive = none
> other boot device = SCSI/onboard ATA boot
>
> and this option on the advanced tab:
>
> onboard ATA device = enable
> onboard ATA device first = yes

I have none of these options available in BIOS. I can set the first boot
device to SCSI, but then the system hangs when trying to boot.

Thanks, Bob
>
>
>
>
> As for master and slave, the concepts do not apply to SATA disks, since
> they are one disk per controller.
>
> "BobV" <robowa@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:uTuvqBz4EHA.2600@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>>I have a new ASUS A7N8X-E with a SATA controller on board, and a new WD
>>SATA drive, and am finding it impossible to make it the boot disk.
>>
>> XP SP2 will recognize the disk as long as I have a IDE disk installed,
>> and the SATA disk is usable, but I am unable to use it as the boot drive.
>> If I try to reinstall XP without the IDE drive then the install won't run
>> because it says that there are no drives at all.
>>
>> I can use XP's disk management to partition and format the SATA drive but
>> this doesn't help.
>>
>> Any answers, thanks, Bob
>>
>
>

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