dumb question IDE/SATA

So right now my (old)motherboard has 2 IDE channels and 2 SATA channels.

I’m not sure if it is because of my motherboard, or if it’s because of windows XP, but I could never use the SATA channel out of the box. I had to install a driver first via windows (I don’t have a floppy drive to load the drivers first).

My new rig only has 1 regualr IDE channel and 8 (I believe) SATA channels.

Since I’m running 2 IDE dvd drives and one IDE hard disk (which I’ve always used for the OS) and another, larger, SATA HDD… what options do I have? I do plan on running vista, but I also plan on running XP on a dual boot.

Do I need to ditch one of my DVD drives and run the HDD as the master and the DVD writer as the slave on the IDE? Or should windows (XP and vista) automatically recognize the sata channels without a driver? So that way I can ditch the IDE HDD and just use the SATA drive until I can grab another one

thanks
steve

get a usb stick and put the drivers on there, and make sure the sata channels arent set to raid if your not using them as raid.

you can use a USB drive via “F6” during install? no shit

thanks for the help, kevin :beer:

yeah most new bios will boot from usb.

well, it was either the HDD or the DVD-rom… didn’t like playing with both at the same time.

first tried using the HDD as master and DVD as slave… then vice versa. Both times it only recognized the HDD. So I just ditched the old IDE HDD and am running both DVD’s along with the SATA.

bummer :tdown: oh well, more reason to buy another SATA drive. Since SP1 is supposed to be coming out (or maybe it’s already out) I’m just going to stick with Vista and ditch XP all together, unless I need it for some reason in the future (or as a virtual machine)

damn steve

Vista doesn’t recognize sata drives out of the box?

I haven’t done a fresh vista install yet…

yeah, it does (although, wasn’t 100% sure that it would a few days ago).

XP doesn’t though… but I’m done with XP for the time being, so whatever

It does but he was saying he wanted to use XP rather than Vista but wouldn’t be as gunshy about Vista since SP1 is around the corner (Beta3 or RC1) is out now.

^ werd.

no problems with vista yet though, so who knows.

umm… what is the Sata driver you need… if its common like Nforce, a newer windows XP disk should auto recognize…

I believe it was the silicon image drivers. Not 100% sure on the new board.

I have XP media center 2005… not sure if there is a newer version past that.

yea silicon image isn’t in XP sp2 so its doubtful that its in media center.

just grab a floppy and go for it… simple enough. or if you can USB it (check the bios) that would be easier.

floppy drives are dirt cheap btw

Only on Vista! You can’t do that with XP, will need a floppy.

Not my 3ware escalade controller or onboard silicon images ones I’ve tried. I’ve had luck with some intel SATA controllers, but they aren’t even RAID controllers.