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reformating a hard drive

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

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  1. tripplite

    tripplite Guest

  2. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    I'm pretty sure, if your BIOS supports it, you can use a USB key to load the drivers. If you can't do that, just use a USB floppy. Like I said before, you and the rest of those guys don't have the drivers for your SATA controller included in the install disk, so therefore it's not going to install.
     
  3. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    tripp, should say "some people" instead of "everyone" as a few of us in this thread haven't had that problem.
     
  4. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Goodswipe: You make that sound like a lot. Hard disks have a lower price limit because there are a lot of parts that are the same regardless of capacity. In any case, there's a Hitachi 60GB S-ATA notebook drive there for $50. More significantly, 160GB drives are only $64. I'd hardly call that expensive, especially when IDE drives are the same price, newegg included.
    Tripplite: It happens sometimes, but not very often. You'd probably find it a problem most on machines that originally ran Vista, as the drivers for their controllers wouldn't be included in XP's library.
     
  5. engage16

    engage16 Regular member

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    If its on an OEM laptop you either have to disable the native sata support or slipstream the drivers... I've found slipstreaming them is probably the best way to do it that way you always have a copy of XP ready to go if something catastrophic happens... Yes you can hit F6 to load sata drivers but it doesn't always work on a laptop keyboard until everything is loaded into the machine, drivers and such.
     
  6. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    sam, didn't have that problem when upgrading 3 laptops & 1 tower from vista to xp. the 3 lap tops got xp pro & the tower got xp home.
     
  7. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Fair enough...
    What do you think the cause of this is then?

    I've seen lots of articles that are written as if using a boot floppy disk is mandatory for installing XP on a S-ATA drive, yet others have never had the need to, myself included...
     
  8. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    All depends on what kind of SATA controller is in your box. Windows (also depends on what flavor) doesn't have support for every SATA controller out there, such as Adaptec SATA controllers. You will run into even more problems with stand-up cards. I've had several LSI controller cards not install due to Windows not supporting the driver. This is when you need to go to the vendors website and download the supported driver, then use the F6 option.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2008
  9. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Hmm, I thought those were the ones it did have drivers for...
    Well so far as I say, the nForce 4 & 6, Intel P35 & X38's southbridge counterparts are all supported, silicon image and Gigabyte's own controllers are as well.
     
  10. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    right now i don't know as i haven't had that problem. if i can then i use my win98 bootdisk to fdisk & format the drive. if no floppy is available then i use my xp cd. even my original xp pro without any service packs haven't had any problems with sata. last night i had to do a fresh install of xp pro on a pc messed up with spyware & possible viruses. it uses a sata drive & had no problems loading xp. loaded the board drivers after xp was loaded. i think it has to do with the bios with sata setting instead of something else.
     
  11. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    Is the system in front of you? If so, go into device manager and look at what kind of SATA controller it is using.
     
  12. engage16

    engage16 Regular member

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    Sam, the Intel P35/X38 boards are not supported natively by XP, I have a GM965 which is a 'generation' behind them and had to manually install the drivers... It also depends if the board was made to run XP or Vista. As my machine was made for Vista so I had to install the drivers myself. If it was made for XP then it may have a built in compatibility...
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2008
  13. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Well, what can I say, I've installed XP twice on my X38-DS4 and twice on my P35C-DS3R, to a WD360GD (1) and WD2500AAJS (3), both are S-ATA drives, both had no issues.
     
  14. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    goodswipe, that was done at the customer's house last night from 7pm to midnite.
     
  15. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    Ok, never mind then. Either way, the only way IMO for someone to get XP to install SATA drivers, is if the OS is slipstreamed(OEM vendor), or the user downloads the driver for the SATA controller via the vendors website.

    Those are just hard drives. What type of controller are you using?




    Class is dismissed....
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2008
  16. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    the clue is in the first quote - the word older. That perhaps is the answer. Modern S-ATA controllers are designed to work with the drivers built into XP, presumably the older ones aren't - though I can't think why that would be.
    Just because you've found somewhere that states you have to manually install controller drivers to install XP to a S-ATA drive doesn't discount all of our evidence. I even know someone with a 965P-DS3 who installed XP without a hitch to a S-ATA drive, isn't that the board you have, goodswipe?
     
  17. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    /sigh

    Let's read through that again, shall we?

    Yea, because the controller driver is not included in XP! If they are included, then why do so many people have issues? The only way you get it to work is if you have them slipstreamed.

    No that isn't the board I have. I don't even own a pc. I work with servers and storage boxes all day long at work, so getting on the computer to play games is the last thing on my list of priorities.

    My whole point of posting those quotes was to show you that NOT everyone can install XP and have support for their SATA controller. A search of Google will show you that 90 percent of the problems people have is trying to install SATA controller drivers on their box that are not there.

    Again, what controllers are you using that you successfully installed the drivers for via the XP CD?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 7, 2008
  18. Deadra

    Deadra Member

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    My problem is fixed now, I just used a floppy to wipe my hard drive. But I had to install sata drivers before I could install windows. My motherboards manual tells how to make a floppy sata driver disk so I just did that and then windows could see my hard drive. Thanks.
     
  19. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    Oh yea, Sam. I took a look at that MB you were talking about, take a look at this.

    Third Party Driver...
     
  20. goodswipe

    goodswipe Guest

    So you used the controller driver that was supplied with the MB?
     
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