Win XP setup does not find a disk

[BruthamanQ]

I just finished putting everything together. Set up the BIOS and began installation of Win XP Home. I have three hard drives, one of which I intend to use for system files, two of which I would like to have set up in a RAID 0 for gaming. All three drives are SATA (if that matters).

It takes me through the first part of the set up, but when it comes to the screen where I am supposed to partition the drive, all I get is "unknown disk". The BIOS recognizes all three drives. So, I quit the installation, disconnected two of the SATA drives from the system, entered BIOS, confirmed one drive showing in BIOS and attempted installation again. Same problem. Setup does not find a disk to install OS onto.

Any suggestions?

[BruthamanQ]

After further perusing of the forums, I've established that I cannot install XP directly onto a SATA drive. From here, please correct me if I'm wrong ...

I have to interrupt the installation process with F6 and install the third party drivers provided with the motherboard. The only way to avoid that is to slipstream a disk to include the drivers(which is way beyond my technical ability), otherwise, I will need a floppy drive.

Seems like it may be a whole lot easer to simply buy another drive and connect it to the IDE header for the purposes of installing the OS. Anyone have a simpler solution?

[cmillar6]

there really isn't a simpler solution, you will have to install 3rd party SATA drivers by pressing F6 during the windows install. I suppose a simpler solution would have been to have purchased a motherboard with native SATA support.

[GraemeM]

Originally Posted by BruthamanQ After further perusing of the forums, I've established that I cannot install XP directly onto a SATA drive. From here, please correct me if I'm wrong ... I have to interrupt the installation process with F6 and install the third party drivers provided with the motherboard. The only way to avoid that is to slipstream a disk to include the drivers(which is way beyond my technical ability), otherwise, I will need a floppy drive. Seems like it may be a whole lot easer to simply buy another drive and connect it to the IDE header for the purposes of installing the OS. Anyone have a simpler solution?

my suggestions would be: buy a floppy drive; slipstream which doesn't sound that hard (http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html); or try to find an old, cheap (or free) IDE harddrive (doesn't need to be bigger than 10gb), install XP, and then use Norton Ghost to clone it to your SATA drive.