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reformating a hard drive

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by Deadra, Jul 2, 2008.

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  1. Deadra

    Deadra Member

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    I have an odd situation. I have a hard drive with windows installed but I need to wipe it to install the sata drivers because they need to be installed with windows. But I cant see my hard drive because the motherboard only has one IDE slot and I need that for my dvd-rom drive. Is there any way to wipe a drive using a floppy?
     
  2. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    I'm sorry I don't understand your question. Are you reinstalling windows to the same drive you have now, what drives do you own, and what interfaces do they use?
     
  3. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    yes i use a floppy all the time. haven't had to load the sata drivers yet on the systems i've worked on.
     
  4. tripplite

    tripplite Guest

    WINXP does not support SATA hard drives, however you can go to the manufactures website download the drives, put them on a floppy and during the xp installtion put the floppy in when prompted and the drivers will load allowing you to install

    OR

    go into your bios before the installtion and disable
    Native SATA Support
    not all bios'S have this option.... but if you are able to disable it then you can install xp without the SATA driver

    (note: once the xp installtion is done however you must install the SATA drivers to obtain sata disc speeds and performance, otherwise it will act like a IDE drive instead)


    if your computer does not have a floppy drive or you would prefer not to use it then you can always slipstream the drivers into your xp disc

    to do this you use software called Nlite
    http://www.nliteos.com/

    guide
    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...d-disk-drives-during-windows-xp-installation/

    you can also slipstream drivers for other components, service packs, remove features and such other thing! its really very simple and works GREAT!!!

    so anyway these are your options!

    best of luck!
    -tripplite
     
  5. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Hmm I never knew that, I've always installed XP onto S-ATA hard drives without issue...
     
  6. tripplite

    tripplite Guest

    really? i've done it quite a few times and without a custom made disc with drivers the installtion would never gone through.....and i was using both the 32-bit and 64-bit OS so i dont think it makes a difference.......

    (psssst.... sammy if you pirated Xp then it most likely has sata drivers slipstreamed in already along with updates and such)

    -tripplite
     
  7. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    whether legitimate or otherwise, Home or Pro, VLK or not, it seems to make no difference. My S-ATA drives have always been detected at startup. However, I've always used recent chipsets - the only ones I've had to install XP on when using S-ATA hard drives are the nForce 4SLI, the Radeon Xpress 200, nForce 650i, Intel P35 and Intel X38. When I installed XP with my old VIA KT600 board it was to IDE drives, always - I indeed didn't spot the S-ATA hard disks in the install but they were setup using RAID.
     
  8. Sophocles

    Sophocles Senior member

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    Windows XP didn't initially come with SATA support. I've never used a floppy for installing XP on an SATA drive, and that's a lot of drives. In fact I haven't owned a floppy since 2001.

    1. set the bios to make it boot from the cd rom only, disable all other drives. Windows will still detect you hard drive and install to it even disabled.
    2. Place Xp in CD rom, save and exit bios.

    As your system boots up you will be asked if you'd like to boot from CD Rom, hit enter. You should know what to do from here.

    This should be enough to get you started
     
    Last edited: Jul 3, 2008
  9. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    What are you guys talking about? There aren't drivers for hard disks, the drivers you are loading are for the controller. That's why you don't have support for those drives trippy - the controller driver isn't included on XP. And what the hell is this guy trying to do, I don't really understand this - LOL? I think XP supports using a USB key to load the driver, no?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 3, 2008
  10. GrandpaBW

    GrandpaBW Active member

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    So have I, Sam. I have not experienced a problem with XP finding the SATA drive to install the OS.
     
  11. Sophocles

    Sophocles Senior member

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    I spoke only of support, and if the OP follows my directions exactly there is a good chance that his issues will be resolved.
     
  12. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    Yea, I wrote my comment as you were doing yours. I was really referring to Sam and Trippy.
     
  13. Sophocles

    Sophocles Senior member

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  14. tripplite

    tripplite Guest

    XP does not have SATA support.... many many people with OEM computers who attempt to do a reinstall on there sata drive get the

    "Setup did not find any hard disk drives"
    error
    now if they have a XP disc from the manufacture then its gonna have the SATA drivers no doubt....i hope LOL

    but i guess since most of you guys out there are working with custom rigs and not OEM machines you dont experience these issues with your motherboards....



    sorry buddy but not quite as universal as you might think!!!
    i had to do a fresh install of xp on a friends laptop the other day and the only way it booted off the CD was if all the other entries were deleted from the list (hard disc and such), even so the computer still needed the SATA drivers:( there wasn't any other way around it!

    and unfortunately disabling Native SATA Support was not listed in his bios:(


    -tripplite
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 3, 2008
  15. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    still didn't load sata drivers when upgrading 3 vista toshiba laptops & a vista acer tower to xp pro for laptops & xp home to the tower with no problems.
     
  16. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    WOW, who's using SFF SATA drives in laptops? Those things are way too pricey and I don't see any reason to use them on a laptop.
     
  17. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    You what? Whenever I've looked S-ATA 2.5" drives have been no more expensive than their IDE counterparts, just like with 3.5" drives...
     
  18. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    I did a quick Google search and everything I saw ranged from 150-400 dollars or more. What would be the reason for using them other then faster data i/o? It's just a laptop, not a server or PC. I could understand using them on servers where you get a lot of traffic running on the disks.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2008
  19. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Well all the laptops I've seen in the past two years have used S-ATA hard drives - it's modern technology, what can I say?

    2.5" IDE hard drives at Scan UK start at £30.16 for a 40GB and are around the £40 mark for 120GB drives.
    2.5" SATA hard drives from the same store start at £29.96 for a 40GB and are around £33 for 120GB, 250GB drives are available for less than £60.

    lrn2google lol!
     
  20. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    Ok, those were prices from the UK. I'm here in the states and everything I saw was pretty pricey. And what kind of drives where those? Probably a crappy brand. Like I said before, there would be no reason to use a "SATA" drive in a laptop unless you were doing some serious work on it that required the drive, like on a server. But if you can find a SFF SATA drive there, that is worth a shit, more power to you - throw it in there!

    **update**

    Just checked newegg and the cheapest SFF SATA drive I could find was 52 dollars - USD.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2008
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