SATA Drivers for Vista Install?

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deadman_uk

[H]ard|Gawd
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When installing XP on a SATA hard drive, you need to load the SATA drivers from a floppy disc during installation.

Does the same apply for Vista? or is Vista smart enough to recognize a SATA hardrive?
 
I think it has to do more so with your motherboard seeing it than the OS. If the OS does not see the drive, then you need to install the SATA drivers on it. It's pretty rare now to find a motherboard that does not support native SATA.
 
protias said:
I think it has to do more so with your motherboard seeing it than the OS. If the OS does not see the drive, then you need to install the SATA drivers on it. It's pretty rare now to find a motherboard that does not support native SATA.
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My motherboard is an ASUS A8N-E, it does support SATA, it supports SATA-II as well (which my hard drive is).

When I installed XP onto my SATA, XP didnt like it, so I had to load sata drivers from a floppy disk for XP to install on it. So from what you are saying, I will have to do the same with Vista if I wish to upgrade?
 
Vista is newer, so it should have more drivers than XP. Also, I believe Vista will attempt to get drivers over the internet if it can. I think you will be OK, but if you have a rare SATA controller you might need the floppy. I haven't ever used a floppy with a vista install, I didn't need it. My mobo is an A8N-SLI Premium, I don't know if they have the same controller.
 
taqueso said:
Vista is newer, so it should have more drivers than XP. Also, I believe Vista will attempt to get drivers over the internet if it can. I think you will be OK, but if you have a rare SATA controller you might need the floppy. I haven't ever used a floppy with a vista install, I didn't need it. My mobo is an A8N-SLI Premium, I don't know if they have the same controller.
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Sort of a side question but... why cant I find any Vista chipset drivers for my motherboard on the ASUS website?
 
deadman_uk said:
Sort of a side question but... why cant I find any Vista chipset drivers for my motherboard on the ASUS website?
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Because they're either lazy or don't offer them. You have an NF4 chipset board, so go to NVidia' site and download the chipset drivers for Vista there.
 
I also have an A8N-E board. I have installed XP many a times and have never had to install anything to make a drive to work (except my to Raid cards).
 
deadman_uk said:
When installing XP on a SATA hard drive, you need to load the SATA drivers from a floppy disc during installation.

Does the same apply for Vista? or is Vista smart enough to recognize a SATA hardrive?
Click to expand...

Loading Vista on my P5B with my drives in AHCI mode didn't require any additional drivers. It did require drivers for XP in the same configuration.
 
Under WinXP if you don't run SATA drives using AHCI mode then you don't need to press F6 and install drivers for it. Doing it this way, you don't get to turn on NCQ if that is important for you. Peformance tests have been inconclusive whether NCQ helps or not. It varies from drive to drive, user to user.
 
tuskenraider said:
Because they're either lazy or don't offer them. You have an NF4 chipset board, so go to NVidia' site and download the chipset drivers for Vista there.
Click to expand...
I guess I should have added that Vista doesn't require NF4 drivers to install on a single drive, with XP it depends as noted above.
 
Under WinXP if you don't run SATA drives using AHCI mode then you don't need to press F6 and install drivers for it. Doing it this way, you don't get to turn on NCQ if that is important for you. Peformance tests have been inconclusive whether NCQ helps or not. It varies from drive to drive, user to user.
Click to expand...

I dont understand what NCQ is. Are you saying I am running in AHCI mode? XP does ask me to press F6 during the windows install and I have to instal my drivers from the floppy disk.

Is it better to not run in AHCI mode then?
 
NCQ is Native Command Queuing. And the short explanation of it is that it can dynamically rearrange fetches from the disk so that data overall can be accessed faster when multitasking. In practice, the advantage of turning that on is inconclusive.

To run in AHCI mode, you need to enable that in your BIOS first, then during Windows install you need to press F6 and load the drivers. Otherwise, XP will not be able to find any of your drives. If you don't have AHCI enabled, pressing F6 doesn't matter at all. If you press F6 and load drivers, XP will still use the MS default IDE drivers. If you don't press F6, XP will still use the MS default IDE drivers.
 
I installed Vita and don't like it but when I go to reformat new 500 GB SATA HD it's not in the list of drives when I push F6 it ask for drive A what if I don't have a floppy drive?
 
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