Sata Driver Necessary with XP=SP2?

[mr_tin]

FYI - I'm new to this forum.

Just built new system with Abit 1C7-G board, flashed most recent bios and installed XP to SP2. I have a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 SATA Hard drive 250GB w/16mb cache. When I installed XP I didn't put in the Sata drivers because I am not planning on running RAID.

Everything seems to be running fine, but I am wondering if I should have installed the Sata drivers or does XP-SP2 recognize it OK. I'm wondering if I am losing any of the Sata functionality of the hard drive even though it is working. If I am losing out, can I install the driver now without doing a full reinstall of XP?

Thanks for any replies.

[Blam-O!]

Well, first make sure that both windows and your BIOS recognizes the whole hard drive. If you installed all the chipset drivers then you will be fine! And if windows recognized your full Hard drive during Setup without any other third party drivers, I don’t see any problems.

But just double check everything is well by going to your Control Panel - System - Hardware - Device Manager. And check to make sure there is no ?, !, or any conflicts.

Hope this helps.

[prathapml]

Welcome mr_tin!

As far as what I've seen, most SATA controllers work fine straightaway without needing any extra drivers. That's because they are compatible with Parallel ATA at the driver-level. You need specifically the SATA drivers to be installed only if its not already recognised properly.

As for RAID, almost on every machine with a RAID controller, I've needed to install the RAID drivers - without that it just did not work. But you say you do not want RAID, so you don't need to install the drivers for that.

So in conclusion, all seems fine with your install. What I'd recommend though, is to install your chipset's drivers. The SATA driver doesn't give any extra functionality, but the having the chipset drivers installed will improve the performance of your system. Yes, you can install your chipset drivers right no without needing a full XP install.

Are you already having SP2 merged into your XP disk, or are you installing SP2 separately? If you have it merged into your disk, then that's good.

Have fun!