Serial ATA formatting

"  OR, is there an additional driver I need to load, after reading in the beginning of the CD boot, "Press F6 if you need to load a third party driver" (Something like that)..... If "

Yep, that's what's needed - put the driver on a floppy and press F6, insert the floppy, let XP load the driver, and the install will continue.

spotteddog.

You can obtain downloads from here.

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/index.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Bev.

I didn't get the FastTrack Floppy with my PC. Where do I go to copy the files to floppy that I need to re-install XP with a SATA hard drive? I guess these are the same files you are talking about? (The floppy I need to insert and press F6 during the re-install?)

Thanks

Spott

Dimension 8300
1024 MB (4X256) Dual DDR PC3200 400mhz CL3
P4 3.00GHz
XP Home SP1
BIOS A06
Canterwood i875P
Samsung DVD-ROM SD616T
Nec DVD+RW ND-1100A
2-Seagate SATA 120GB(non-RAID)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128Mb
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
Dell Movie Studio Capture Card
Dell E171FPb
IE 6, Mozilla 1.7, Firefox 0.9
Conexant SmartHSFi V92 56K DF PCI Modem
USRobotic 5686E External Modem
Dell Inkjet Printer J740
EPSON Stylus C82 Series
EPSON Perfection 1660 Photo

shesagordie,

There is no download to create the "Fasttrac Driver Diskette" on that page.

That's my problem; where do I find the download to create the "Fasttrac" diskette that has the SATA drivers on for the OS re-install. I tried Dell Support, but as usual, they are useless. They sent my instructions on how to backup data on my hard drive, when I specifically asked them how to create a "fasttrac driver floppy" need to reinstall the SATA drivers.

Thanks Spott 

Try here:

http://www.promise.com/support/download/download_eng.asp

ejn63,

Thanks for the link.

This is one reason why I am confused on this matter.

Dell's own instructions (which I have printed), specifically say that when I try to do a clean install of Windows XP booting from CD, the installation will not be able to recognize my SATA hard drive. It says, at that point, I must insert a floppy containing the SATA drivers and press F6 to install the SATA drivers and only then will the installation continue.

I have read many postings referring to this matter, but the only thing I can't find is WHERE do I get these drivers? They were not included on floppy with my PC. The only thing on the Dell Resources CD is the Promise Controller.

To get back to your link:

I do not have a RAID controller and I was under the impression that this Promise Controller download on the Dell site was for the RAID controller. Was I wrong? Is the Promise Controller download actually what I am looking for?

I have 2 Seagate drives and found the utility on their CD "DiskWizard Starter Edition", which creates 2 diskettes. As far as I can determine, these are the diskettes I need(???)

Thanks

Spott

Dimension 8300
1024 MB (4X256) Dual DDR PC3200 400mhz CL3
P4 3.00GHz
XP Home SP1
BIOS A06
Canterwood i875P
Samsung DVD-ROM SD616T
Nec DVD+RW ND-1100A
2-Seagate SATA 120GB(non-RAID)
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128Mb
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
Dell Movie Studio Capture Card
Dell E171FPb
IE 6, Mozilla 1.7, Firefox 0.9
Conexant SmartHSFi V92 56K DF PCI Modem
USRobotic 5686E External Modem
Dell Inkjet Printer J740
EPSON Stylus C82 Series
EPSON Perfection 1660 Photo 

I may have a solution though.  I cloned my hard drive to make a back up of the fresh install.  I had to go into bios and change the raid setup to combination.  I then had to enable the SATA 2 to see both drives, you can skip this step if you have only one drive.  ESC to exit saving changes and reboot.  The computer now saw the drives.  I returned the settings back to the original state when I was done and everything is fine....