Can I install vista on SATA drive?

[Romeo26222]

Hello..I am new to know about SATA drives and i decided to use a western digital sata hard disk...now i want to ask can i use the sata drive alone without IDE one?and will i face any problems installing vista or winxp on this drive??

thanx in advance..

[LLXX]

If you set in BIOS option to emulate PATA device then it will be recognised as standard IDE disk and works fine.

If you want to use "native" SATA mode then you'll need drivers.

[uvmain]

sorry, but that's just FUD.

Vista installs to SATA drives perfectly fine without the need for drivers.. The same as XP does.

The only time you'll need drivers is if you are installing to a RAID array.. and this goes for PATA as well as SATA.

When Vista asks for drivers, unlike XP which needs a floppy, setup will let you search all detetcted devices.. including your hard drives, usb drives etc.

*NO* drivers or IDE emulation are needed whatsoever to install to a single SATA disk.

Edited November 23, 2006 by uvmain

[Romeo26222]

sorry, but that's just FUD.

Vista installs to SATA drives perfectly fine without the need for drivers.. The same as XP does.

The only time you'll need drivers is if you are installing to a RAID array.. and this goes for PATA as well as SATA.

When Vista asks for drivers, unlike XP which needs a floppy, setup will let you search all detetcted devices.. including your hard drives, usb drives etc.

*NO* drivers or IDE emulation are needed whatsoever to install to a single SATA disk.

thanx for your reply..but another small question...what is the difference betwen Sata and RAID becaise i don't know what is the raid array is!!

and will the SATA improve my speed rather than the old IDE one??

[3aces]

SATA will improve speeds yes, RAID is were you set up to identical SATA drives, to basically work as one.

[uvmain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

in it's simplest form, RAID combines 2 or more drives, to make '1' drive that has faster throughput.. basically, If you have 2 drives in raid, then it will look like one drive, but ever file is split into two.. so each drive has half the file. therefore, it only takes half the time to read or write that file.

tbh, you're not going to see much of a difference between SATA and PATA speedwise..

sata has a much, much higher theoretical throughput (3GB/S), but you're never going to hit that

sata drives are newer tho, so you're more likely to find that newer sata drives have a larger cache, and therefore a performance increase.

Wiki has all the info you need

Two main reasons converted me to SATA..

1) I wanted a Raptor

2) My case is much tidier with the smaller cables, and it may just be perceptual, but has better airflow.

3) I wanted a Raptor

[Spooky]

Personally myself I would have gone with the Raptor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

in it's simplest form, RAID combines 2 or more drives, to make '1' drive that has faster throughput.. basically, If you have 2 drives in raid, then it will look like one drive, but ever file is split into two.. so each drive has half the file. therefore, it only takes half the time to read or write that file.

tbh, you're not going to see much of a difference between SATA and PATA speedwise..

sata has a much, much higher theoretical throughput (3GB/S), but you're never going to hit that

sata drives are newer tho, so you're more likely to find that newer sata drives have a larger cache, and therefore a performance increase.

Wiki has all the info you need

Two main reasons converted me to SATA..

1) I wanted a Raptor

2) My case is much tidier with the smaller cables, and it may just be perceptual, but has better airflow.

3) I wanted a Raptor

[uvmain]

I did

just waiting til I have enough cash for a second/third one to raid together

I'm running out of drives for OS's!

[j7n]

The only time you'll need drivers is if you are installing to a RAID array.. When Vista asks for drivers, unlike XP which needs a floppy, setup will let you search all detetcted devices.. including your hard drives, usb drives etc.

If the only hard drives you have are connected via a RAID controller then I assume Vista will be unable to search them [in DOS mode].

[Spooky]

Why are people having so many problems with installing on SATA drives, always thinking they need to load drivers to do so?

Basically, if your BIOS can see the SATA drive you can install on it without having to load drivers. I've never, not once, had to load drivers to install Vista on a SATA drive.

Edited January 13, 2007 by Spooky

[kartel]

I am trying to install on a single sata and it cant find the SATA drive without the drivers that I burned to another disk.

After I install the drivers it wont continue installing after the first reboot.

[mdolan]

Why are people having so many problems with installing on SATA drives, always thinking they need to load drivers to do so?

Basically, if your BIOS can see the SATA drive you can install on it without having to load drivers. I've never, not once, had to load drivers to install Vista on a SATA drive.

Hi Spooky,

In some cases you *must* load drivers. I have the IBM X60 tablet sat in front of me and it does not function without loading the SATA drivers. You get a nice BSOD.

Cheers,

Mike

[kartel]

You cant see the sata drive without the drivers, I know that.

It still dont work.

[kartel]

I downloaded drivers from ABIT for the NF7s http://www.abit-usa.com/downloads/download...3112/v10050.zip

I have good results within Vista using my IDE as the OS.

I have not tried installing Vista on the SATA with the Abit drivers.

They are Version 1.0.50

I also installed the Sil GUI locted in the driver package.

Seems ok with Vista

[Philth]

I'll be installing Vista on the 30th. Currently, I'm running a 74GB Raptor HD on an MSI RD-480 NEO2 M/B. According to MSI's website, this motherboard is compatible with Vista, but there isn't any drivers for the motherboard listed for Vista.