Purchasing a new HD

[vliktor]

Hello guys, I'm new here.. just a quick question.

I currently have this setup:

Sempron 2400+ (Socket A) 1.66 ghz
MSI K7N2 Delta2 FSR (nforce2)
Samsung 20 GB HD 5400 RPM (IDE PATA)
1 GB DDR400 RAM
Inno3d 6600 GT
using WinXP Pro SP2

As you can see, my HD space is pretty pathetic
I'm planning to get a 120 GB SATA drive (preferably Samsung), my mobo already has 2 onboard SATA connectors. If I get the new SATA-II drives w/ NCQ, or a 1st gen. SATA drive, will I need to change some jumper settings on the drive, do I need to install drivers for the SATA drive (I've heard that you can't make a SATA drive work as a bootup drive if you don't load the 3rd party RAID drivers from NVIDIA, but I'm not going to use RAID anyway so why does it need to be installed?).. basically, I just want to know what I need to do... I don't have a floppy drive to install the RAID drivers.

 

[Blake]

For an older model motherboard like the MSI K7N2 Delta2 FSR (nforce2), I'd go with the 1st gen. SATA drive. I would get the SATA-II drive w/ NCQ for the latest model motherboard. I would think they would be backwards compatible, but I have heard of some people having problems with NCQ on old motherboards.

The drivers for the SATA drive aren't on the XP cd. Since you aren't using Raid you don't want to enable Raid in the Bios or use the Raid drivers. Copy the drivers from motherboard support CD *\DriverDisk\SATA\*.* into root directory of floppy disk. (i.e. root directory of floppy disk should contain \pide and \sata folders, txtsetup.oem, etc. files.)

Then, boot system by Windows XP installation CD, when the message "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver" shows up, press "F6". Then, press "S" to specify additional device when next screen pops up. Put the driver floppy disk you made in and press enter to continue. If the floppy disk is made successfully, the installation program will ask for selecting driver. Please then select "Serial ATA Controller(Windows XP)".) After SATA driver loaded and Windows XP can recognize the SATA HDD, you can continue to install Windows XP as usual. The one for SCSI is used for SATA.