Reinstalling windows on a new HD.

bretttp1

I’m going to reinstall windows xp on a new 500 gig sata HD, my old set up had windows on a 20 Gb ide harddrive, and had storage on one sata and one external drive.

What I would like to do is remove the ide HD, then to partition 80 gigs of the new drive and install windows on it.

My question is should I disconnect my current sata HD while installing windows, or would this make any difference?

Also how do you know if you need to install sata drivers from a floppy? Will the motherboard not see a sata drive? Because I had problems when I first built the system hence the IDE drive for windows. Where do you get these drivers? I was looking on the Epox website and to be honest I’m not sure what I should be putting onto the floppy

My mother board is an EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLI skt 939.

Any info would be great.

sebastianlieken

first off, ive never heard of having to instal sata drivers before installing windows...even after installing windows as a matter of fact. dont worry bout it.

second, u can plug out ur other hdd, or leave it in, doesnt matter ul get the same results. just select what hdd to install windows onto when in the process of installing

bretttp1

sebastianlieken wrote:

first off, ive never heard of having to instal sata drivers before installing windows

I heard you have to hit f6 or something when installing xp and then you are given the opportunity to install sata drivers from a floppy, The thing is even from when I built the system I've had issues with my sata HD, for some reason it won't recognize it if I choose the restart option, it will find it fine from a cold start or shut down from windows

unnameduser

sata - prob not. usually f6 is for installing drivers for scsi or raid drives.

If there are problems recognising the drive, perhaps you do need to supply the drivers on booting to the installation CD.

Also make sure the BIOS is set properly.

SickBoy

There's a bit more to this than the replies so far.
I would rather have only one drive connected during install for two reasons.
First is that there can be no mistakes of formating/deleting the wrong drive.
Second is that sometimes setup might not agree with what you think is the boot drive and attempt to install the boot sector on what it thinks is your boot drive. If this happens and for some reason that drive fails your system wont boot...

Regarding the drivers, some motherboards are able to fool the install procedure into thinking the drives are plain IDE drives and not require extra driver support but if the board cannot do this then specific drivers are required to in installed during setup by pressing F6 when prompted and selecting them from a floppy disk(cannot be CD/DVD/Mem stick)

bretttp1

SickBoy wrote: »

Regarding the drivers, some motherboards are able to fool the install procedure into thinking the drives are plain IDE drives and not require extra driver support but if the board cannot do this then specific drivers are required to in installed during setup by pressing F6 when prompted and selecting them from a floppy disk(cannot be CD/DVD/Mem stick)

Only getting back to this now

Does anyone know how you make up this driver floppy?

mathias

First , to the OP , I have that same motherboard and you dont need to install extra drivers for the motherboard to work with a SATA drive , so you can rest easy on that one , you wont need a floppy.

On the offchance that it doesnt work , and you want to try it , then the SATA raid drivers are what you are looking for and they are on the motherboard CD , you make the floppy from there ,insert the CD , go to the drivers/Utilities tab , click on serial ata raid , and it will ask you to put a floppy in the drive and make it for you.

Regarding the F6 option and SATA drives , there are/were some motherboards out there whereby the only way of activating the SATA ports was to install the SATA raid drivers , but these would be old boards now and this was only when SATA was fresh on the scene for home PC's.
SATA's were secondary to IDE then as IDE was still the main drive type and SATA were included only for a raid feature.

Most new Boards would be assuming that the SATA drives would be the primary way of connecting hard drives , as a matter of fact , recent boards that Ive worked with only have one IDE for the DVD/CD drive.

bretttp1

mathias wrote: »

First , to the OP , I have that same motherboard and you dont need to install extra drivers for the motherboard to work with a SATA drive.

Thanks for that Mathias, did you encounter any issues with windows not finding the sata drive if using the restart from windows but finding it from complete shutdown and then powering up? Its a problem I have, was just wondering have I got something set wrong in the bios

Capt'n Midnight

probably a bit late, but IIRC the SP2 CD has more drivers built in.

osmethod

Check the Epox website and see is there a bios flash update for your board also.

osmethod

mathias

Thanks for that Mathias, did you encounter any issues with windows not finding the sata drive if using the restart from windows but finding it from complete shutdown and then powering up? Its a problem I have, was just wondering have I got something set wrong in the bios

If you are talking about a soft boot , as in restart from a working windows session then yes , I did get that problem and that problem happens with a lot of motherboards , a soft boot ( selecting restart from windows ) doesnt run the full post sequence on some boards , thus it may miss any new drive.

bretttp1

Thanks Mathias, that was an issue that was putting me off using the sata drive as my primary, good to know It wasn't something I missed somewhere.