SATA driver question

[lemmy999]

I have a new motherboard with the ICH7 southbridge. The motherboard has 4 SATA and 1 IDE (of course 2 devices, master/slave). The motherboard also has the JMicron controller which gives 1 more SATA and another IDE. This Jmicron controlle is known for causing all kinds of problems so I plan on disabling it in the bios. My question concerns the purpose of the SATA drivers people are loading from floppy during Windows installation (pressing F6). Since the ICH7 has native SATA support, I assum I do not need any drivers. Just hook up the HDD and install windows. Do I need to set the SATA ports to IDE (so they are mapped as IDE primary) in the BIOS? Or will I technically be able to install 6 HDD (4 SATA and 2 IDE) and have access to all of them if I were to boot up with a boot floppy? What if I already have a working IDE (PATA) system HDD and then I want use an SATA HDD instead? Do I just boot with a Norton Ghost floppy and then copy the PATA drive contents to the SATA drive and then boot with the SATA? If my motherboard didn't have Native SATA support, where and how would I install the SATA drivers since I would not be doing a Windows installation (so no option to hit F6 to install drivers).

I guess ultimately my confusion comes from the SATA floppy drivers. Is the purpose so that the computer can see these and thus boot from them, or are they drivers for the OS so they OS can see them? Sorry for the long post, but this really has me confused.

[glc]

Check my reply to the other thread that you dredged up.

The ICH7 has native support in XP, you won't need a floppy UNLESS you are installing Windows on a RAID, then the RAID driver has to be installed, that is not natively supported. However, the JMicron will need a floppy driver to install Windows on an IDE drive on that controller, that is not a natively supported controller.

If you are not using RAID, the SATA ports need to be set to IDE.

Okay - if you have a working IDE install, and you want to clone it to a SATA drive, all you have to do is make sure the SATA controller drivers are installed in Windows before you do the clone.

Bottom line, as I said in the other thread, the floppy is only needed for the initial install so the Windows installer can find the drive on a controller that does not have native support and the install process will integrate the drivers.

[lemmy999]

Check my reply to the other thread that you dredged up.

The ICH7 has native support in XP, you won't need a floppy UNLESS you are installing Windows on a RAID, then the RAID driver has to be installed, that is not natively supported. However, the JMicron will need a floppy driver to install Windows on an IDE drive on that controller, that is not a natively supported controller.

If you are not using RAID, the SATA ports need to be set to IDE.

Okay - if you have a working IDE install, and you want to clone it to a SATA drive, all you have to do is make sure the SATA controller drivers are installed in Windows before you do the clone.

Bottom line, as I said in the other thread, the floppy is only needed for the initial install so the Windows installer can find the drive on a controller that does not have native support and the install process will integrate the drivers.

Thanks. And sorry for the double post.

If I have the CD-ROM hooked up to the JMicron and I have the driver loaded and then later I want to boot with a Win98 boot floppy (for system backup), will I have access to the CD-ROM? Or similarly, would it be possible to boot to the CD-ROM (hooked up to the JMicron IDE) with a Windows Install CD if the driver had not yet been installed?

If I set all of the SATA ports to IDE and I install the JMicron Driver (also not using RAID), is it possible for me to have 4 (SATA ICH7) + 2 (IDE ICH7) + 1 (SATA JMicron) + 2 (IDE JMicron) = 9 total drives in the system?

I also have an ASRock 939Dual-VSTA Mobo in another comptuer, but I am not using any of the SATA connectors. The chipset has native support for 2 SATA, 2 IDE, and then it has a JMB360 device on board that provides a single SATAII. However the manual says that no driver is needed for any of the SATA or SATAII unless you are going to be using a RAID setup. This makes sense for the SATA but why is the driver not needed for the JMB360 SATAII?

[glc]

Booting with a CD attached to a JMicron is a hit or miss thing, as is correct operation in Windows. I can't answer the floppy question. Yes, 9 drives are theoretically possible. I don't have the answer in respect to the Asrock.