SATA drive

Fri Feb 04, 2005 1:49 pm

Anyone us a SATA drive for their boot drive? I just bought SATA drive and am going to take out the old ATA drive and put it in another machine. I read that I might need a special boot floppy in order to be able to make the SATA drive my primary boot device. Any advice? I am going to pick up the SATA cable this afternon as the drive did not come with one.

I have
AMD XP 2800+
ASUS A7N8X Del v2
Windows XP Pro (SP 2)

Thanks,
Jim

Fri Feb 04, 2005 3:02 pm

o yea i just put one in my new box, i got mine off the mobo website and when i installed windows i hadda hit f-something to install outside drivers. It works fine and the cable is smaller but if i hadda do it again i would bought 2 hd's and set up a raid, there doesnt seem like a point to having only one SATA (except for the smaller cable) it was kind of a headache for me cause windows would never pick up the hd cause there are 2 sets of SATA slots on the mobo. but it all came together in the end.

Fri Feb 04, 2005 3:42 pm

I think you can do it...

Question- Are all SATA's at least 10,000 rpm?

Fri Feb 04, 2005 4:14 pm

Nope... Only certain drives... SATA is just aconnection protocol thingy...

I have a 10k SATA drive and its staggering how fast it is...

Fri Feb 04, 2005 9:33 pm

Yea. I got a SATA as primary boot. No big deal the setting was in the bios on my Asus.

Fri Feb 04, 2005 9:51 pm

Depends on the motherboard.

Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:52 pm

I've read that the only advantage SATA drives have over their IDE counter-parts is only that the cables can be longer (IDE has an 18" limit) and that SATA cables are narrower, and therefore easier to route and keep neat.

I'm sure 10,000 rpm drives are faster that your standard 7200rpm IDE drives, but spindle speed is not a function of interface. Some SCSI drives have reached 15,000 rpm.

Sat Feb 05, 2005 12:32 am

Originally posted by Lord ZOG
I've read that the only advantage SATA drives have over their IDE counter-parts is only that the cables can be longer (IDE has an 18" limit) and that SATA cables are narrower, and therefore easier to route and keep neat.

I'm sure 10,000 rpm drives are faster that your standard 7200rpm IDE drives, but spindle speed is not a function of interface. Some SCSI drives have reached 15,000 rpm.

SCSI 15krpm drives have been out for a long time.

SATA has faster transfer speeds than ATA. SATA ia 150MB/sec while ATA has a theorietical speed of 133MB/sec ( although most users usually get around 100MB/sec )

Also, in regards to your original question, I have yet to meet a SATA drive that required special drivers from the motherboard manufacturer, but as always read your manual.

The above of course is assuming you arent doing anything fancy like RAID.

Sat Feb 05, 2005 9:26 am

I didnt load any extra drivers... I used the built in intel SATA controller and it worked fine. It booted up the first time and then I installed the mobo drivers and I was set.

Maybe if I had used the other SATA controller it might not have worked...

Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:24 am

80gig hard drive.
no idea how it works.
no idea how good mine is.
realize that there are differences.
my computer turns on so "praise the lord!"

Sat Feb 05, 2005 4:32 pm

I did it. I had to load the Silicon Image drivers from a floppy by pressing F6 for third party drivers early in the Windows Xp installation process to get it to find the SATA drive.

Jim

Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:24 pm

I love my SATA drives. Tiny cables, and hotswappable HD kits.