SATA hard drive as primary master

[336532]

Hi, I'm new to this forum and in need of some advice. I,ve just built a computer which contains an ASUS P4p800 E Deluxe motherboard. The only two drives I have fitted are a CDRW into IDE2 and a Seagate Barracuda SATA HDD into SATA1. When I open BIOS the drives are configured in the following way:
CDRW: Secondry Master
SATA HDD:Third Master
Obviously the ither master and slave slots are ubdetected because I only have two drives.
Please can somebody tell me how I can make the HDD my primary Master. I'm afraid my knowledge of these types of things isn't quite up to scratch yet and i'd really appreciate any info.
Also when I try to install my OP for the first time what order should I set the boot devices in the BIOS.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Neil

 

[Frank4d]

The primary and secondary IDE devices are for parallel IDE drives, and your SATA drive is either IDE3 or IDE4. There is no way to change that, but it is not a problem.

In the BIOS setup there is a BOOT tab. You set the boot priority there 1st device CDRW, 2nd device SATA drive, 3rd device disabled.

When you install Windows XP, setup should boot from the CD. You will be asked which drive you want to install Windows on. Choose the SATA drive. If you are installing SP2, the CD may have drivers for your SATA drive. If not you will need to press F6 and have your SATA drivers ready. When done, remove the XP CD and boot from your SATA drive.

A couple of notes: If you made your CDRW the secondary drive thinking your SATA drive wound be the primary drive, it doesn't work that way... so go ahead and make your CDRW drive the primary master. And... after XP is running, you can go back into the BIOS and change the boot priority so the SATA drive is first (although this really doesn't buy you much except shaving 1-2 seconds off your boot up time).
A

 

[paulrw1]

You will need the SATA driver from your mb manufacturer. It SHOULD be on a cd. Extract the proper drive(s) and put them on a floppy.

Then as adviced already, begin fyour XP install from the CD-ROM. WHEN the install begins, you will see a message at the bottom stating that if you need to load a SCSI or other driver, press the F6 key. Press F6. During the install, you will be prompted to insert the floppy with the SCSI (SATA) driver. Do so. The floppy will read the driver. Follow the on screen prompt and finsih installing the OS. It's easy to do!