[bonestonne]

ok, one of my friends is building a new computer...all the parts are at his house, and we plan on putting it all together on saturday...among its layout, its a 2.4Ghz core 2 duo, 2 gigs of RAM, 300GB SATA-1 drive, mATX board and case, Creative X-Fi for audio editing, all that jazz.

now, i'm just beginning to save up for a rig like that for myself, so since i have no previous experience with installing an OS on an SATA drive, i just want to make sure i'm doing it right the first time.

the board should come with a driver on either floppy or CD that i put on before the installation starts? he's going to be using XP, probably slightly nLited, i'll work on its details at his house as to what will stay on the OS, what service pack he wants, all that jazz.

all i need to do is get the SATA driver recognized by setup and it'll go smoothly from there?

and also in case he asks, if he were to put in another SATA drive, it would just be plugging it in, nothing else right?

i feel silly asking it, but i guess its because i don't want to not have an answer for his multitude of questions...this isn't my first build, but it'll be his, so i'm expecting questions.

[ripken204]

i have no tips, thats the perfect answer
you just plug it in and go, same exact thing as you would for an ide drive.
those drivers on the floppy are raid drivers, so unless he's using raid, they are pointless.

[bonestonne]

sweet. hopefully by the end of this year i'll have enough [roughly $1200] to buy my own new setup....

my only concern is that i want mine to be a server setup running XP...partly because i need all the room with what i do, Audio/Video editing, 3D rendering, and a touch of gaming...i'm looking at dual 603 Xeons, but i dunno..by then i'm hoping they're cheaper, and boards are set up better...

i'm kinda sick of IDE now..i want to rock this house with SATA drives in RAID. my friends computer wont get that, but mine will, i want to minimize the chance of windows crapping out.

[nitroshift]

ripken204, on Mar 16 2007, 03:49 AM, said:

i have no tips, thats the perfect answer
you just plug it in and go, same exact thing as you would for an ide drive.
those drivers on the floppy are raid drivers, so unless he's using raid, they are pointless.

I beg to differ ripken. He will need those drivers even if the hdd is single but setup as s-ata.
@bonestonne
On the mobo CD you'll find an executable to setup a floppy that you'll need at the F2 stage during the windows install.

[DL.]

@nitroshift: Don't you mean F6, not F2?


@bonestonne: If using unattended then you cannot use that method, you'll have to integrate the SATA driver...

[bledd]

ripken204, on Mar 16 2007, 01:49 AM, said:

those drivers on the floppy are raid drivers, so unless he's using raid, they are pointless.

only a small number of sata drivers are included with SP2 (i think mainly intel ones), you may well have to integrate the sata driver with nlite (or use floppy as you said)

what motherboard (and sata chipset) is he using?

[nitroshift]

DL., on Mar 16 2007, 10:50 AM, said:

@nitroshift: Don't you mean F6, not F2?

typo....

[ripken204]

nitroshift, on Mar 16 2007, 03:22 AM, said:

ripken204, on Mar 16 2007, 03:49 AM, said:

i have no tips, thats the perfect answer
you just plug it in and go, same exact thing as you would for an ide drive.
those drivers on the floppy are raid drivers, so unless he's using raid, they are pointless.

I beg to differ ripken. He will need those drivers even if the hdd is single but setup as s-ata.
@bonestonne
On the mobo CD you'll find an executable to setup a floppy that you'll need at the F2 stage during the windows install.

ive built quite a few comps with sata and have never experienced this problem...
but i guess if there is poor mobo support then it can happen.

[3aces]

form what i read dont quote me.......but 16mb cache has no huge performance gain over 8mb cache.........so save a few extra $ and go for a 8mb cache

[nmX.Memnoch]

There is a performance gain and the price premium isn't that much. For example at Seagate 7200.10 250GB drive with 8MB cache is $70 from NewEgg. The same drive with 16MB cache is $75.

[Jeremy]

My old DFI 661FX MLV mobo (which is now my girlfriend's) needed the SiS SATA/RAID drivers in order for Windows Setup to even detect my first SATA HDD. As I didn't have a floppy drive I had to use nLite to integrate the drivers.

[nmX.Memnoch]

The Intel ICH6/7/8 controllers also require the drivers if you put them in AHCI mode, which is recommended since that's how you get the controller in native SATA mode.

I integrate the drivers for all of my personal systems manually...but I keep a USB floppy drive around in case I'm working on someone else's computer.

[bonestonne]

everything has been ordered, and its all at his house now...sadly its been snowing all day and since his driveway is quite steep, i'm not sure i'll be able to do it tomorrow...we shall see.

but he's got a floppy drive..i'm not sure if its permanent, but its there if we need it. i would integrate the drivers, but i'd rather not take the risk of it not starting...i've had a few too many nlited XPs sort of just stop after a while because files didn't burn, and theres no turning back...it'll depend on the situation for what actually goes. if its easier to integrate at the time, that will happen.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16813127017
^thats the board he has.