Sata hd manage xp

[FranckDulapin]

Hello,I see SATA 64GB in SetUp but not in XP Pro. May be I havn't adequate driver for it?

 

[Paperdoc]

I assume this "64 GB" unit is a data storage drive, and not your boot device.

Win XP does NOT have a drive built-in for SATA or AHCI devices, but it does know how to use IDE devices. So there are three ways to get Win XP to use a SATA device (it should really be treated as an AHCI device).

1. When Win XP is first Installed, as an early step in the process, you hit the F6 key when prompted and use the utility to load from a FLOPPY disk the driver for that device type on your mobo. This driver becomes a "built-in" device driver in this particular installation of XP and it can use any SATA / AHCI device for any purpose.

2. If you are booting from an IDE devbice and using SATA or AHCI devices solely for data, you can Install in the running Win XP the driver for such devices. Your manual should tell you how to find the driver on a CD. Then you can use them. BUT you cannot use that device for BOOTING XP, because it must boot from a device it understands before it can load the driver.

3. Most mobo makers have added a work-around for this problem with SATA and XP in the BIOS Setup screens where you configure the SATA device ports. Near where you Enable the ports, you'll find a line for something like SATA Port Mode. The choices usually include: IDE (or PATA) Emulation; Native SATA; AHCI; and RAID. If you choose IDE (or PATA) Emulation, the BIOS will make the SATA drive appear to Windows to be a simpler older IDE device, and XP will handle it with no problem. You just will miss out on a couple of features of AHCI that may or may not matter to you. This is the simplest solution, but it loses a couple of features.

You can chose Native SATA, but the better option is AHCI. AHCI will require that you install the necessary driver in Windows for such a device. This is Option 2 above (and Option 1 for a boot drive). Hopefully the mobo manual and CD make it clear which driver you need for this.

RAID is NOT the right choice, excepting two cases. The obvious one is when you actually do want to use this drive as part of a RAID array - then you MUST choose RAID, and go through some other steps to create the array and install required drivers. The other comes about when some mobo makers provide one driver called their RAID driver for the mobo, but it actually contains both the RAID driver and the AHCI driver. Read your mobo manual carefully about these driver requirements. On some boards you MIGHT have to set the SATA Port Mode to AHCI and then Install their "RAID driver" into Windows to use the AHCI device, even though you do NOT use the RAID Setup utility to create and use a RAID array. On a few boards you might have to set the Mode to RAID and install the RAID driver, but NOT create a RAID array unless you want one.