Floppy driver disk 64 or 32 bit?

[Janes2005]

I have just plugged a western digital 200Gb SATA HD on a barebones BB-AM351M
Got through formating and booting with the XP os disk and know about the issue with SATA drives and XP. What I don't know whether to make a 32 or 64 bit floppy to install the raid drivers.
Can anyone help?

[Coops]

You do not need Raid Drivers if this is single Hard Disk system

[Janes2005]

XP is refusing to instal with SATA drive needs third party drivers and I was told this is the solution?

[Janes2005]

Question answered by Novatech it is the 32 ir 64 bit version of XP to which it refers.
So easy with good tech support

[Coops]

Well as for which driver you need. that depends on what you are installing.

Windows XP comes in 32bit or 64 bit version. So you need to use the correct one for the version of Windows you have.

I am still a little puzzled as to why it is asking for raid drivers. If the system BIOS is set correctly it should not be needed for Single disk operation as RAID function should not be enabled as its not needed.

Obviously if you were using two HDD and set them up in a Raid such as Raid 0 or 1 then i could understand that.

Strange

[Conrad]

XP won't see the hard drive if you don't hit F6 and specify RAID drivers. None of the machines I've built using SATA hard drives have worked without it. Vista works fine, XP does not.

[Janes2005]

Turns out the stop code I am seeing is a hardware fault so am returning the unit to Novatech for replacement. Thanks for all the help.
All the advice I have had says XP will not work without the SATA drivers from the motherboard disk tho just in case some other poor confused person is reading this!

[Taxation]

I installed my OS, which is XP SP2 onto my sataII drive, and it didnt need any drivers.

Maybe im just one of the super duper lucky ones :roll:

[Coops]

I installed three machines this morning with Windows XP SP2 without sata drivers.

I think people maybe confusing different situations.

If you are using SATA ports that are built in to the Mainboard Chipset and the BIOS is configured so that SATA Mode is set to IDE you should not need drivers to install XP. This is because the SATA controller emulates IDE function so Windows XP can see HDD.

If you set SATA mode in the BIOS to Raid or AHCI then you will need to use Driver Disk during Windows XP setup or you will not see HDD.

If you are using a secondary controller. This is a SATA Controller that is seperate and not part of the Mainboard Chipset. Examlpes of this are High Point, Silicon Image. Then these will require a driver at all times. Reason for this is they are not tied in to the chipset in such a way that BIOS can emulate IDE Function to SATA. Therefore Windows XP setup will require Drivers in order to load controller to see HDD.

Obviously all this being based on the fact you are using Windows XP with SP2 built in. Previous SP level will have different effect.