Formatting SATA drives

[xwb]

Do sata drives need to be formatted before installing the OS?

I'm in the process of replacing my SATA drive. The OS installation goes so far and then blue screens. I'm just wondering whether they need to be formatted first, or partitioned. It is a 320G drive on XP. I wasn't aware of any limitations on XP.

 

[biglebowski]

XP formats the drive during the install, you can choose quick or full format at the beginning of the install.

Blue screen could be a driver issue, is it an old laptop? Did you get a driver cd with the new disk, if so you can try loading them during the install by pressing (I think it's) F6 at the start of the install. I think the step is called custom hardware drivers.

Biglebowskis Razor - with all things being equal if you still can't find the answer have a shave and go down the pub.

 

[xwb]

It is a Compaq 311C netbook. It doesn't have a DVD drive so I'm running that off a USB. It gets as far as loading up the whole OS. It falls over at the point where it tries to work out what disks you have and how much space each one contains.

 

[RichLee]

You might need to slip-stream the SATA drivers into the XP installation on the USB stick - try using NLite to do so.

Richard.

 

[xwb]

Thanks - I'll give that a try over the weekend.

 

[xwb]

My son decided he couldn't wait so he made a 50G partition using a W98 installation disk and then loaded XP from there. I'll still have a go at NLite after everything else that needs doing.