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Old 02-28-2005, 06:09 AM   #1
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What are Hard Drive Controllers?

i recently bought windows XP with the intention of upgrading from windows 98 SE but when i try to install XP i'm told that no hard drive controllers are present and because of that it wont allow me to finish the installation. What are hard drive controllers? What do they do? and does anyone have any advice in relation to my problem?
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Old 02-28-2005, 08:17 AM   #2
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Hard drive controllers (IDE, SATA or SCSI) should already be on your motherboard. What are the system specs for this computer? Is it a name brand computer or a home built one?

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Old 02-28-2005, 01:19 PM   #3
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Hmmm, the computer is neither a brand name nor would i particularily classify it as home built. I received it a few years ago as a present and as far as i know it was built in a small computer store that builds pc's. so as far as having any definite knowledge about it i'm at a bit of a loss.

From what i can gather my specs are; shuttle AV40/AV40R MAINBOARD, 40GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 2, 256MB Ram, Win 98SE

Well, as far as figuring out what my specs are that's about the best i can find.
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Old 02-28-2005, 01:44 PM   #4
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Everest is a nice, free little program that will list all of your specs.
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Old 02-28-2005, 04:11 PM   #5
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If that's an AV40R, it has a RAID controller, and you will need the driver for it on a floppy. When you first start XP setup, it will say to press F6 to install a third party storage driver at the bottom of the screen. Press it, and put the floppy in, wait a minute or so, then follow the prompts.

ftp://ftp.shuttle.com/Drivers/Raid/Ftwindrvv200b18.zip

Unzip it onto a floppy.
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Old 02-28-2005, 07:56 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cricket
Hard drive controllers (IDE, SATA or SCSI) should already be on your motherboard.
I'm confused. I thought IDE drives had the controller physically on the hard drive's circuit board, hence why it's Integrated Digital Electronics. From what I've researched, SATA and SCSI have the controllers on the motherboard. I really hope I'm not thread jacking so the sincerest of apologies if I am.
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Old 02-28-2005, 11:29 PM   #7
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What do you think you are plugging your IDE cable into?
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Old 03-01-2005, 06:45 PM   #8
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Whoops, sorry, I didn't clarify. I meant controller chip. You connect the hard drive to the IDE controller/channel, yes, but what I meant was that I thought the controller chip for IDE was on the actual hard drive and not the motherboard. Oh and is it the controller chip you install the drivers for, or the controller/channel? I'm either having a huge blonde moment or I'm just confusing myself once again. I don't want to take this thread off topic, so if you think it's best for me to start a new thread, I'll do so.
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Old 03-01-2005, 07:21 PM   #9
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Thanks for all the help everyone, i've finally installed Windows Xp. That file really did the job Glc, cheers.
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Old 03-02-2005, 12:03 AM   #10
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There are no drivers for controller chips on the drives - the drivers are for the motherboard controllers.
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Old 03-02-2005, 08:33 PM   #11
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Aaah, now I understand. There are controller chips on the drive that control the drive and controller chips on the motherboard which control the drive channels. You need drivers for the motherboard controllers so the channels work so then hard drives can work in them. Now it makes sense! Thanks glc
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