Originally posted by: Insane3D
Lots of misinformation in this thread.
First, the "F6 procedure" is usually only needed when the SATA ports are controlled by a add-on chip, like the Silicon Image chips. These are basically the same as IDE/SATA cards, just integrated onto the board, and still on the PCI bus. Most of the boards that have the SATA ports controlled natively by the chipset can act like normal IDE ports during the windows install, unless you are setting windows on a RAID array.
SATA drivers can EASILY be slipstreamed onto a XP CD with almost no effort. It's simply a matter of cutting and pasting a couple of lines in a couple of setup files using notepad...not difficult at all.
Yeah, everyone keeps saying the floppy is obsolete. How can that be if its the goto guy for flashing bios and installing drivers?
It's not really. About the only drivers you'll need to load from a floppy these days is SATA/SCSI ones during a windows install, but as I said, it's EXTRMEMLY easy to slipstream these onto the OS CD. As for bios flashing, the "purists" still use it, but windows based flashers are extremely common nowadays, and all the bugs that early versions had have been worked out. Even if you still don't trust windows flashing, it takes all of about a minute to make a bootable DOS CD with the bios flasher and files on it.
IMO, there is no reason for a floppy nowadays...
Edit:
Here is the guide for slipstreaming SATA/RAID drivers onto your XP CD...
http://greenmachine.msfnhosting.com/READING/addraid.htm
The guide uses the SI drivers, but the procedure can be followed for any SATA/IDE/SCSI controller...