Installing XP on SATA drives - need floppy?

[Taz]

Once i've built my new rig, I want to install Win XP Pro on it. I understand that at some point during the install i'll need to load the SATA drivers provided by the motherboard manufacturer. Can this be done without a floppy disk (i.e. via a CD)? The system will have one or two DVD-RW drives in it.

It's not a big deal but i'm trying to minimise the number of bits in my new PC to reduce power consumption and improve airflow, and was not planning on installing a floppy drive. I guess I might have to stick a floppy drive in.

[ikonia]

don't see what not as the cdrom drives will have been configured with the windows driver as you are installing from the CD

[Olly1234]

On my NF7s you have to press f6 at the start of windows setup when it says do you want to install third party scsi..Howver on my asus sli system you don;t have to install them at all if yuor using the nvidia stata ports instead of the silicon image ones as it auto detects them

[BUFF]

Depends what SATA controller your mobo uses - if it is in the chipset (Intel/nVidia) you probably don't need to install a driver, if it's an addon (e.g. SiL) you probably do.
You can slipstream the driver into a Windows install CD but imho it's more hassle if you only have 1 PC compared to quickly connecting a floppy.
If you are installing several PCs it becomes worthwhile.

[Taz]

Thanks for the replies. It's probably going to be an nForce 4 SLi or nForce 4 Ultra board (haven't decided just yet, last outstanding component!). So the key is to use the nVidia SATA ports and XP setup will auto-detect the drives?

On a related note, if XP setup will install its own drivers then is it worth updating these with the nVidia ones supplied with the motherboard? It's just that i've heard some bad stories about the nVidia drivers but i'm not sure if they related to the SATA drivers.

[Bldyannoyed]

You should only need to install drivers from a floppy disk if you are going to use the drives in a RAID array, otherwise they operate in the same way as normal IDE's. If you wanna RAID them you define the array thru your mobo's RAID controller then install the windows drivers during the setup process.

[Apex]

Once i've built my new rig, I want to install Win XP Pro on it. I understand that at some point during the install i'll need to load the SATA drivers provided by the motherboard manufacturer. Can this be done without a floppy disk (i.e. via a CD)? The system will have one or two DVD-RW drives in it.

It's not a big deal but i'm trying to minimise the number of bits in my new PC to reduce power consumption and improve airflow, and was not planning on installing a floppy drive. I guess I might have to stick a floppy drive in.

You only need the floppy connected at setup once windows is up and running the floppy is no longer needed.

You could make a customised xp cd with the drivers on and thus no need for a floppy but this can be time consuming and is a bit of a hit and miss thing.

Some chipset do not need the drivers loading has the xp set up will see them has normal pata ide channels

Regards the problems with drivers, this tends to be nvidias "IDE" driver that you install from the nforce driver package that is on nvidas website/cd once windows is installed

[Taz]

You should only need to install drivers from a floppy disk if you are going to use the drives in a RAID array, otherwise they operate in the same way as normal IDE's. If you wanna RAID them you define the array thru your mobo's RAID controller then install the windows drivers during the setup process.

I see. I won't be using raid - just two SATA drives as C: and D: so, hopefully, nothing to worry about!

[Betty_Swallocks]

You should only need to install drivers from a floppy disk if you are going to use the drives in a RAID array, otherwise they operate in the same way as normal IDE's. If you wanna RAID them you define the array thru your mobo's RAID controller then install the windows drivers during the setup process.

That should be true, but when I reinstalled XP recently after changing my primary PATA drive for a SATA one I was unable to install until I connected a floppy and used the drivers from the disk.

[DaKid]

I need to use a floppy when reinstalling windows (which I've just finished doing - yay for clean installs!!) although I bought my setup a while ago and I think that I have an old version of my board ... I believe it may have been updated since, although whether that means there's now onboard SATA support (which is what you're looking for I think?) I don't know.