I am planning to put together a new computer.

I was going to purchase a SATA dvd drive but I keep hearing stories about not being able to install Windows XP off the DVD because the drive won't be recongized. Some people are saying I will need at least one IDE optical drive to install windowns?

Is this true????

Thanks .... Mike

It's probably similar to the situation where some motherboard bios require you to load a third party driver to install XP to a SATA hard drive -- even if you're installing from an IDE drive. The issue lies with the SATA drive support in the bios.

If the motherboard you buy requires you to use a diskette for a SATA hard drive install, it will probably require the same to access a SATA DVD drive at boot. I recommend an external USB floppy drive for that purpose.

Now, to install to a SATA hard drive, you load the drivers when XP requests third party drivers, but you'll probably have to boot to an old fashioned boot disk that includes the drivers to install from a SATA DVD drive.

is this BIOS limitation something that manufacturers are working on? it seems pretty hassling to not be able to have a complete SATA system- hard drives and optical drives, without having to boot off a floppy or an IDE drive.

It's all up to the manufacturer as to what level of support each board has. For example, I have an older Intel D865 motherboard with a P4 2.8 Northwood and I was able to do a clean install of Windows XP to a new SATA drive last year. On the other hand, I just gave away a cheaper ASUS X200 based board with PCIe that was a nuisance because I had to install Windows to an IDE drive. A boot disk needed to be created to install XP to a SATA drive. Since I didn't have an external diskette drive at that time, I had to install to a 40 gig IDE instead and use the 200 gig SATA as drive D:

The best way to find out how to proceed is to go to the board manufacturer's website for support FAQs, or post on their message boards. You can also ask at Tom's Hardware forums about individual boards, someone is bound to know the board you're thinking of buying.

Eventually, IDE will fall by the wayside and full SATA support will be available on all boards, but that's not the case today.

The original issue with the SATA DVD drives was that the SATA chipset used was incompatible for some reason. It was literally hit or miss with the original SATA DVD drives (talking 2 years ago or more). Since the SATA spec has become integrated into the official chipset offerings, and not soley through the coupled southbridge, I think the problem has died off. I have never had a problem installing to SATA HDD, so I have no idea what your deal is yipsl, I really don't. I have been using SATA drives for about 4 years, and never have I had to install SATA drivers as long as I wasn't using RAID. Now if RAID comes into the picture, drivers are a necessity.

I wasn't using RAID either, but the ASUS P5RD1 required a diskette to install XP from an IDE DVD drive to a SATA hard drive. That's caught many people by surprise and I suspect that other boards could have other issues.

I'd assumed that there could be similar limitations with SATA DVD drives. If that's not the case, then he should have no problems, but I'd still check with the manufacturer's FAQs and message boards just to be sure.

Hmm... That's a good question for which I have no answer, but now a great deal of curiosity. Seeing as how most of the newer MB's only have one ide cable, does this mean that one needs to have at least one ide cd / dvd drive to do any re-installs ?

Again, good question. Perhaps JJ or Da (sick) Ninja or Dario (Needs a shorter name) has an answer.

Hi Mike
As you are looking at a new machine you should be fine.
From my experience as long as the motherboard recognises the DVD drive as a drive it should allow it to be configured as a boot device and XP will be happy.
I have been using Plextor PX-760A for a couple of months and they are extremely quiet and fast + no issues with installations.
Motherboards I have used - ASUS P5WDG2-WS, ASUS M2N32 WS Professional, GigabyteGA-M59SLI-S5
Although slightly off subject if you are looking to install onto a raid device (or even just enable the RAID feature on the motherboard) you will need to create a floppy disk with the RAID driver on.
Hope it works out well for you.
Compulsive Computing

http://www.compulsivecomputing.co.uk

I wasn't using RAID either, but the ASUS P5RD1 required a diskette to install XP from an IDE DVD drive to a SATA hard drive. That's caught many people by surprise and I suspect that other boards could have other issues.

I'd assumed that there could be similar limitations with SATA DVD drives. If that's not the case, then he should have no problems, but I'd still check with the manufacturer's FAQs and message boards just to be sure.

Odd. I used to use the ASUS P4C800-E and also used the Abit IC7 MAX (both 865 chipset boards, and neither gave me a problem with SATA. I agree it is better to be safe than sorry, which is why i keep a Floppy drive in my closet and a PS/2 keyboard in a drawer. Worst case scenario is you order the SATA optical drive and it doesn't work and you return it (or make a diskette).

What kind of computer are you building? AMD AM2/939 or Intel 775? Specifically what chipset?

The way I should have explained my thoughts on his question about installing XP from a SATA optical drive is that there probably won't be a problem, but he should check the board before he buys to make sure. Even good companies put out some budget boards that cut corners, which is why I gave my example of the ASUS board with the ATI northbridge and the ULI southbridge.

I didn't expect problems from an ASUS board either. That's why, for the months I used it, I had to install XP to a 40 gig IDE and use the SATA as the second drive. The bios recognized the SATA drive, it just would not allow it to be set as the boot device without drivers being installed when Windows asked for third party SCSI or RAID drivers.

I've been thinking of SATA DVD myself, but I'll make darn sure a future board allows booting from a SATA optical drive, I won't take it for granted just because the board lists 4 SATA and supports RAID 0 or 1.

I wish I'd found this article at Neoseeker before I bought the board last July. As is, I gave it away this Christmas to a friend who has only IDE, so he'll be okay.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/ [...] 1-v/4.html

Maybe I just got the one ATI chipset board by ASUS that had that problem? I'm looking forward to the RS690 "T" model arriving with all the features, and I want to use a SATA drive for that, but I'll make sure first. This time around, it will be a newer ATI southbridge, so I hope the issues are taken care of. I was planning on getting ASUS's board when it arrives in February.

Well said. I never suspected you were lying, but that fact does surprise me. Good luck on your next board.... avoid ASUS like I do

What you heard was probably true some time ago, but not any more. I built a system for my wife over a year ago (the MB is an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium). I used two Plextor PX-716SA SATA DVD drives and a WD 400GB SATA hard drive. The installation of everything went perfectly.

I remember when USB was first coming out and how Windows had a bitch of a time recognizing it. I don't remember which version of Windows was fully USB aware, but I think it might have been XP SP1; otherwise, drivers were needed for everything.

Bottom line is that any motherboard made in the past year or two should work.

Good luck!

Avoid Asus? You must be one of those guys/gals that avoids Sony products also because of fanboyism?

DVD optical drives? I, myself, have not made the switch. I've thougt about it. The only benefit I see for SATA DVD drives are that you can burn many disks concurrently. In a machine I had a while back I bought four NECs (this was back when ripping dvds from netflix was all the rage) and was trying to burn four dvds at the same time. It was hit or miss on the master/slave IDE channels. Sometimes the burns would come out alright, most of time they didn't. After that experience my fad with ripping dvds fadded away. But since SATA are on their own channels, in theory (and maybe in actual practice) this should work fine. The south bridge on the 965 I believe moves 10gbs. This should be ample to run 4 burners at 4x and still have enough bandwidth to surf the web or run 1 download.

If your buying SATA just for cable management, may I suggest also consider a single IDE round cable.

Personally, I am finished with Sony anything!

First it was their dirty little shit tricks with putting rootkits in their CDs, now it's their piss-poor mini-DV tapes. I have 6 tapes: 4 Sony, 2 Radio Shack. All 4 Sony tapes have the audio fucked up and now the taping of the births of my two children, their 1st christmas', and birthday's are fucked up. At first I thought it was the recorder, but after purchasing a new RS tape, I discover the recorder is fine.

Fuck Sony!