Installing Windows on a SATA drive

[BWVictorious]

Heyas

Just bought my first SATA system and I just realised that apparently you need to have a floppy disk with the sata drivers to install Windows... big bummer has I havent had a floppy for the last 6 years...

Does anyone know if I can do it with anything else besides a floppy disk?
and im going to install Windows XP Media Center 2, anyone knows if it recognises sata by default?

Yeah... i know its not quite hardware but its kinda...

Yours Truly
K

[megah0]

http://www.nliteos.com/

use that and slipstream the drivers onto your install disc, easy as.

[FatalSaviour]

As mgh says, you can slipstream it.
Personally, I always use nlite before an install regardless of whether I need SATA drivers or not, it just makes the post-install Windows update procedure a lot less painful when all hotfixes have been integrated and installed already.

[fat jez]

What's your motherboard? Mine will let me plug in a USB floppy drive and use that as a boot device or indeed as a device for installing SATA drivers. Failing that, some will allow a USB memory stick to be setup as a floppy device (I think it creates 2 partitions, with the first used as a virtual floppy).

Of course, all those assume you have a way of creating a disk with the drivers on it - I assume you do, since you are using something to post to here!

Cheers,
Stephen

[BWVictorious]

Heyas

thanks for your help but it appears that Windows Media Center has no problems with SATA... didnt even complain at all.. just like installing in an IDE.

[SSA]

Have I made a huge mistake then? I've just built a system with a SATA drive but I didn't use any drivers or floppy disks (Win XP Pro).

[toolsong]

I didn't need any additional SATA drivers to put XP SP2 on a NF4 mobo

[DragonStar]

I didnt need any drivers to install my XP Pro, i have 2 x 250GB sata drives.

[atmadden]

Me neither XP sp2 imaged from my old ide disk straight to SATA.

[FatalSaviour]

Depends on your board, and SATA controllers, but some have native SATA support, and SP2 has some drivers included.
If you don't need them, you don't need to install them, simple as . There may be some performance benefit from using manufacturer's own drivers, but nothing huge

[GoNz0]

most of the time you wont need anything unless your going to use the sata as a raid array, then you need the floppy / nlite to load the raid drivers b4 setup begins

[Jinx]

It quite often depends on the SATA controller......if the controller is built into the chipset (NF3 onwards for example) then you don't need drivers at all.
If the controller is a seperate chip on the mobo (Silicon Image are most prevelant) then you will need the drivers.

Just 2p's worth......