PCI SATA150 controller in older pc with crashed hard drive

[biglilsteve]

Hi all!

My friend has an older pc with DMA/33 hdd interface, and his hard drive crashed! I am planning on installing a new hdd for him, but I want to just update him and get an internal PCI SATA150 controller and new SATA150 hdd.

My question is, since I wont be able to install the drivers for the controller before using it (since its an entirely new hdd without an OS on it yet), will that affect my being able to at least install WindowsXP on the new hard drive?

Thanks a lot everyone!

[jimbo1763]

Hi all!

My friend has an older pc with DMA/33 hdd interface, and his hard drive crashed! I am planning on installing a new hdd for him, but I want to just update him and get an internal PCI SATA150 controller and new SATA150 hdd.

Is that cost-effective, by the time you add the cost of the controller and the hard drive? How old is the system? A new board would have SATA on it, and I wonder if he would ever need the card later after he ultimately did an upgrade. (Note how I neatly avoided answering your real question? )

[biglilsteve]

Heh yeah note taken. The computer isn't THAT old...its got a P4 2.26GHz, 512MB RAM...GeForce4 graphics. He just wants to have the computer running again. So the controller is gonna be like $30 and the 80gb SATA150 hdd is gonna be like $50 (both from Newegg). Thats decently cost effective, right?...

[Tuttle]

The card should come with a floppy disk with drivers on it. If not, you can go to the manufacturer's website, download the drivers and put them on a floppy instead.

When you boot from the Windows CD, the first prompt in the blue screen bit (down the bottom) is to press F6 to install third-party SCSI or RAID drivers. Hit F6 like crazy until that goes away, then wait. Later on, it'll give you an option to load the drivers off that floppy.

Yes, it has to be a floppy disk.

[biglilsteve]

Hmm...alright well most of the ones I've been looking at come with a CD...is the driver simple and small enough for me to put the CD in my computer and copy the driver to the floppy?...

[Tuttle]

The bit you need for the F6 installation will be. If the card only comes with a CD, there will probably be a tool on it to make the floppy disk. Otherwise, look for a directory which has a TXTSETUP.OEM file in it, and which will fit on a floppy (including all its subdirectories). Those are the files you need.

[biglilsteve]

Excellent...you've been a great help Tuttle

[DanceMan]

My friend has an older pc with DMA/33 hdd interface

The computer isn't THAT old...its got a P4 2.26GHz

Anything P3 or later ought to be at least ATA66. P4 would surely be ATA100.

[biglilsteve]

I dunno...just tellin you guys what he told me...he opened up the pc and looked at the hard drive...said it read DMA/33

[DanceMan]

The most cost effective solution for him would be any current IDE hard drive. There would be little if any speed loss compared to a SATA drive.

[biglilsteve]

Ah...so are you telling me that I could buy an IDE Ultra ATA100 hdd, and it would be backwards compatable with the DMA/33 interface?

[jimbo1763]

Ah...so are you telling me that I could buy an IDE Ultra ATA100 hdd, and it would be backwards compatable with the DMA/33 interface?

Yes as to backwards compatibility. But as has been mentioned already, I would be surprised if that system could not handle ATA100.

That's what I was getting at with my first post-I would think about saving the cost on the conversion to a SATA drive until I had a motherboard that would handle it without having to spring for the cost of a separate controller card, unless there were other reasons to want SATA over IDE.

[biglilsteve]

Alright, nice!...so now I get to tell my friend he can save the 30 bucks...and I don't have to worry about trying to install drivers for the controller card on a system with no OS yet...everyone wins!!...Thanks!