Loading Xp On A Sata Drive

HURIAKI · 07-02-2008, 05:26 AM

Hi folk newbie here
I know there are lots of posts relating to this but just want a quick bit of advice please.

Had a call to help a friend with computer not booting and after a few hours decided to completely reload Windows media XP from his recovery disk. It is wdc250g SATA drive, anyway, using recovery disk went through wiping and formatting to NTFS ( 1.5hours) and started to load XP, all files, copied accross and seemed to go OK but when it got to first reboot it came up with unable to read c: put system disk in. Tried operation again this time it saw c:\windows before I reformatted but still failed at first reboot with same result. Then read on here that SATA drivers might need loading via F6 so made a floppy on another machine with the drivers from support disk. put a USB floppy on the machine ( no floppy built in) and tried again. Hit F6 then S but it didn't see the drivers and in fact there was no activity from the floppy at all even when I removed and replaced the disk. ( the floppy does activate during post).

I am guessing that the HD is not formatting properly because the SATA drivers are not present and that the XP recovery disc ( Evesham computers) doesnt recognise a USB floppy at that stage so intend returning with an internal floppy drive and starting again.

Is it normal for SATA drives not to create the MBR like this or am I barking up the wrong tree. All the posts seem to say that they cant get as far as this one has before failure

belfasteddie · 07-02-2008, 12:59 PM

If you don't load the floppy file then Xp will just load the drive as an Ide. You lose a little bit of real estate. Is the floppy activated in the Bios?

HURIAKI · 07-03-2008, 09:23 AM

thanks Eddie, got an internal floppy and it all went in OK up and running now.

07-02-2008, 05:26 AM	#1 (permalink)
HURIAKI Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 2 OS: XP	Loading Xp On A Sata Drive Hi folk newbie here I know there are lots of posts relating to this but just want a quick bit of advice please. Had a call to help a friend with computer not booting and after a few hours decided to completely reload Windows media XP from his recovery disk. It is wdc250g SATA drive, anyway, using recovery disk went through wiping and formatting to NTFS ( 1.5hours) and started to load XP, all files, copied accross and seemed to go OK but when it got to first reboot it came up with unable to read c: put system disk in. Tried operation again this time it saw c:\windows before I reformatted but still failed at first reboot with same result. Then read on here that SATA drivers might need loading via F6 so made a floppy on another machine with the drivers from support disk. put a USB floppy on the machine ( no floppy built in) and tried again. Hit F6 then S but it didn't see the drivers and in fact there was no activity from the floppy at all even when I removed and replaced the disk. ( the floppy does activate during post). I am guessing that the HD is not formatting properly because the SATA drivers are not present and that the XP recovery disc ( Evesham computers) doesnt recognise a USB floppy at that stage so intend returning with an internal floppy drive and starting again. Is it normal for SATA drives not to create the MBR like this or am I barking up the wrong tree. All the posts seem to say that they cant get as far as this one has before failure

07-02-2008, 12:59 PM	#2 (permalink)
belfasteddie Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 461 OS: Suse 10.2 64 bit	Re: Loading Xp On A Sata Drive If you don't load the floppy file then Xp will just load the drive as an Ide. You lose a little bit of real estate. Is the floppy activated in the Bios?

07-03-2008, 09:23 AM	#3 (permalink)
HURIAKI Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Posts: 2 OS: XP	Re: Loading Xp On A Sata Drive thanks Eddie, got an internal floppy and it all went in OK up and running now.