i was on pto yesterday but did have 1 call i needed to jump on. while on the call, i got fed up with my home computer, which was just slower and more erratic than ever. now, i admit, this is my fault, i am always installing and uninstalling software to play around, and after a while, windows just grinds to a halt and is all but unusable. it was to the point that even itunes wouldnt launch! i even had to boot to safe mode to deauthorize my computer for the 20-odd sings i had bought from the iTunes store. so i decided it was time to reimage my own machine.
Time for a lesson in installing Windows XP with SATA drives..
i got out my handy bootable CD rom windows xp install disc and figured this would be a ritual i do regularly. my current computer is like 1.5 years old, so this hasnt been done yet on this box. well, i booted the CD and got setup going, and it didnt see my hard drive!!! so i tried another CD that does XP setup, same result! a 3rd (yea, you know i’m a geek when i have 3 bootable XP install discs (ones with sp1, sp1a, and sp2). NONE of them could see my hard drive. then sort of a bell went off, my hard drives, as new ones are, are SATA, NOT IDE! i went to dell.com and google’d around and confirmed – that was the problem. XP setup cant see SATA drives! but how to fix?? well, after some more research, i found i needed to download drivers for the HD (mine is an intel) controller (not the manufacturer of the drives themselves). i probably could have scoured my original CDs, but I just preferred to look online. Also, there was no option to load them onto a USB key, which was a big disappointment.
Anyway, so now you’ve hunted down and downloaded some drivers (from dell.com in my case), put them on a <b>FLOPPY</b>!! only by sheer luck did i have a handful of floppies around. it took me 2 floppies to find one that worked, and then i had to choose between driver A (RAID) or B (AHCI), and of course, i guessed wrong and had to repeat a few steps before finally windows setup saw my SATA drives and i could install to my boot disc. now, i screwed up and forgot to copy off the main drive a folder full of content, but i can re-get most of it, such is life and a lesson learned. i have a C: drive and a D: drive, now all my good stuff like this is on my D: drive (it was previously on my desktop). i also have a lacie external USB drive and need to be more methodical about backups!
Updated: 05/17/2006: I’ve gotten some good traffic from this post and I found some guy, who ambitiously, decided to slipstream SATA drivers for an unattended Windows XP install -this guy is brave. Well, not that brave, it just might not work, no downside. Anyway, this is his post on all the steps on how to slipstream SATA drivers. And Dell added “mock screenshots,” since you can’t get screengrabs for DOS
