A SATA 2 question

[Shafra]

Hi, I'm about to setup a new system and I'm using a WD Sata 2 hard disk. In my BIOS it says for SATA 2 operation I have IDE and SATA mode and IDE is the default. The motherboard manual says that I do not need to make a boot disk if I use IDE mode, but I do if I want SATA 2 set in SATA mode. I don't have a floppy drive, and would have to buy one. What is the difference in the setting? The motherboard does not say, if I use the IDE default will it run slower, and if so how much slower?

Also, if I set it as IDE and then installed my XP Pro with SP2 and all the updates and then set it to SATA would that work?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[Shafra]

Does anyone know?

 

[jeremy]

on the latest mobo chipsets , you need to use a floppy only when using sata raid and when not using raid theres no need to as it emulates sata as ide so no driver will be nessasry and as far as i know it doesnt affect the speed , whats your mobo? ill have a look at the manual just be sure , anyway worst case scenrio (if you really need to use a driver floppy on windows setup) then just use nlite to slipstream it to the windows installation

 

[Shafra]

Thank you Jeremy.

This is the motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081

A friend gave it to me for free, he only used it for a couple of months but he used a IDE HDD so he didn't know about what settings I should use for SATA 2.

And I didn't realize you could slipstream a SATA driver onto a Windows XP disk. I did slipstream SP2 onto the CD already.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one left that doesn't use a floppy drive! I guess for $10 I should just get one.

 

[jeremy]

you welcome , thats not exactly a common chipset theres barely mobos that use it , you were right you do need to use a driver floppy when its set to sata2 mode but i doubt there will be a speed diffrence between it to ide mode , anyway if you wanna use sata2 mode as i said use nlite to slipstream the driver forget about floppys , alot of ppl including myself dont have a floppy drive its pointless these days, sata drivers can be easily slipstreamed/nearly all diagnostic softwares also have a cd version+the ones that dont you can easily make a cd version out of it by using a program called virtual floppy drive & nero to make a bootable cd and if you want to add bit more more content then you can use winimage to read from the virtual floppy drive and then change format to 2.88 and just burn it with nero or use ultraiso to add the bootable image and save as iso and then burn it , same goes for bios updates

 

[Shafra]

So you still think from looking at the motherboard manual it will require the SATA driver? Or is that only if I want to run it in Sata mode? I'm happy to just run it in IDE mode even if it will be a bit slower, but if you think it's really worth it I'll go to Asrocks site and get the SATA driver and slipstream it to a XP install CD.

Again, thanks for the help.

 

[jeremy]

youll need the driver only if you wanna run it in sata2 mode , in ide mode you dont need to use any driver , i doubt its slower and i dont think its worth the hassle

 

[Shafra]

I think I'll just skip making the driver disk and use the IDE setting Hopefully everything will install smoothly. I've done about 5 builds but I'm always really nervous everytime I do one, especially when it's time to hit the power button. HeHe