Does Windows support Serial ATA (SATA) drives?

A. SATA is a new hard drive standard that does away with the standard 40-pin IDE cable in favor of a new thin 7-pin cable. SATA uses only one cable per device to connect the drive to the controller, which eliminates the master drive and slave drive concept. The power connector is also different, although some SATA drives also provide an old-style power connector.

Out of the box, no current Windows version, including Windows Server 2003, supports SATA drives. However, just as you can add a SCSI controller to Windows, you just need to add the correct SATA driver that ships with the motherboard or SATA host adapter. After you've installed the driver, Windows will be able to see the SATA controller and any attached devices. For more information about SATA, visit the SATA Working Group Web site at http://www.serialata.org.

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Very very poor. You need a good article fast on installing Windows XP on a SATA C Drive, and the correct way to install drivers, as Windows does not recognise SATA to boot.

James March 31, 2004

The article is good, but not sufficient to give information
whether SATA hard disk supports windows 98, win98se & shall i connect SATA HD with 3cd-roms and two PATA HD, one cd-writer, dvd -rom, cd-rom , 40GB & 120GB hard disk(HD)?
motherboard will detect all driver & roms?with ASUS P4P800 Deluxe board,mail the information, so i can decide whether to buy a SATA hd or not? cause i need support of it for WIn98se

Mr.Sachin N Khambekar April 14, 2004

I have a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GBv SATA Drive,,Unable to Installed it as a SATA Drive..I have a Giga-Byte Motherboard..I have emailed Giga-Byte About the problem I'm having but with no luck from the so far.

Fred Allen April 17, 2004

might read this:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1156288,00.asp
or
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1150360,00.asp

Anonymous User October 26, 2004

"If you're setting up Windows for the first time, installing under Windows 2000 or Windows XP is pretty straightforward. The one key point here is that you need to have a floppy disc available with the RAID drivers. When you see the Windows setup screen start to appear, press F6 to install a SCSI or other storage driver. Then, you'll get to a screen that asks for the floppy. Insert the floppy and press the "S" key. The driver will be read from the floppy. At that point, hit ENTER and proceed normally through the setup process."

Anonymous User October 26, 2004

ok

Anonymous User December 18, 2004 (Article Rating:

)

Funny thing is... that IDE driver is the only one which I skipped, when I installed Win2K to this 200GB SATA drive. No F6 trick or later installed drivers needed. Saying "SATA drive need drivers before Windows reckognize it" is like telling "it's impossible to boot from any other device than floppy or PATA drive"...

Anonymous User January 19, 2005

sorted my problem

Anonymous User April 10, 2005 (Article Rating:

)

Re. The floppy with SATA drivers + F6 method - this seems to be the way to go. I looked in the RAID folder on the driver CD for my ASUS motherboard and the readme.txt confirms this as well as giving specific instructions about which files to put on the floppy depending on the VIA chipset.

Anonymous User April 26, 2005 (Article Rating:

)

Im trying to install windows but I dont have a floppy drive (Who does these days rite). Must i buy a floppy drive jus so i can uyse my sata drive?

Anonymous User May 08, 2005 (Article Rating:

)

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