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Old 01-09-2009, 08:21 AM   #3 (permalink)
Tumbleweed36
Asst Manager Hardware
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: USA
Posts: 19,460
OS: XP Professional


Re: HOW to install a sata2 hd?

Manic as usual has given good advice. There is one other obstacle you may face with this setup and that is your board supports only Sata I and this is most likely a Sata II drive. Therefore, you must set that drive to Sata I so it is seen by the motherboard properly.

Here is some imformation that might be helpful:

Most drives use a jumper to lock the data rate to Sata I. However, instead of using "jumpers" to lock the data rate to 150mb/sec to make the drive compatible with SATA 1rst Generation Controllers, Hitachi uses a Utility known as "Feature Tool" that you can get from here

Feature Tool

Here are instructions on how to use the tool:

Instructions for Hitachi Feature Tool

The preferred method of using this tool to change the drive to a SATA Type I or SATA 1rst Generation type is by creating a bootable floppy disk. But if you don't have a floppy drive there is also a CD Image that you can burn to CD to use the utility as a bootable CD

Once you change the firmware of the drive, then it should be recognized by the controller and work like any other Sata drive.

If you want the drive to be a bootable drive (with OS on it), be sure to load the Sata or Raid drivers if you are using XP, and then it should be fully usable as a bootable drive. With Vista, drivers should already be present with the OS disk when you set it up.

If you want the drive simply as storage, you don't have to load the Sata drivers with either XP or Vista.
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