How to install Windows on a SATA boot drive

Question

Here is how to install Windows XP on a SATA boot drive.  This procedure was first developed by syar2003 and has been used by many iusers ncluding myself.   Although it was originally developed for Neo2 mb's and Windows XP Pro, it has general applicability to systems as well.
1.  Have only the SATA drive you want to be the boot drive active in your system.  Disconnect the power to all other HDD's if any.
2.  Have only one optical drive active. Disconnect the power to the other opticals if any. (Best to have a burner optical as master on IDE1.)
3.  Plug SATA drive into SATA 1 on the mb.  (it may show us as an IDE drive somewhere down the list in BIOS.  That's okl)
4.  Enable appropriate SATA options in BIOS.  Set boot order to floppy, cd, SATA drive.  Set boot priority to SATA drive.
5.  Partition and format the SATA HDD using the utilites CD that came with the SATA drive.  (If you don't have an HDD utilities disk, download one from the website of your HDD manufacturer.)
6.  Run Windows  setup.  No need to load drivers at the F6 promt unless you are planning to do a RAID configuration.
7.  Windows XP should install without incident.
8.  After you are up and running, plug the power back into your other HDD and optical drives if any.
If you have a board older than the K8 series, it may be necessary to load the SATA drivers at the F6 prompt.  If the above procedure does not work, than try it again loading the SATA drivers.
If this procedure does not work for you, it is likely that your particular SATA HDD has some compatablity problem with Windows setup and/or your motherboard.  The solution to this is to try another SATA drive.  In general, most failures using this procedure have been traced to certain WD, Seagate and Hitachi SATA drivers of smaller capacities.  Fewer problems seem to have occured with Maxtor HDD's.

Answer 1

Kaplan, from an earlier post of mine regarding sata2 hdds - I have them plugged into the sata1&2 ports, installed the nvidia raid first and then installed winxp (in both raid 0 and raid 1).  My bios is 3.1 and its a known problem that bios 3.3 & 3.4 have nvidia raid problems but seems to be fixed in the beta bios 3.53:
I just purchased 2 hitachi deskstar sata2 80gb hdds ($60 each at zzf) and the interesting thing about them is that you have to "enable" sata2.  I have been testing the performance of sata1, sata2, raid1 and raid0 and the results are below.   
The drives themselves are factory default set at sata1. Since I purchased OEM, no software or instructions were included.  I had to go to the hitachi website download section to download a dos based program (the features program) to enable sata2.  After enabling the hdds to sata2, they were recognized in winxp in the nforce ADMA controller device driver and the screen reads with the primary channel as Serial ATA Generation 2 - 3G...and all 4 boxes below it are checked (the boxes enable bios select xfer mode, enable read caching, enable write caching and enable command queuing are checked).  An interesting thing about the sata2 spec is that all sata2 hdds must come standard with NCQ...its not advertised on these 80 gb hdds on the hitachi website (unlike the larger hitachi sata2 hdds) but its a standard sata2 spec and these 80gb hitachi hdds are recoginized in winxp as sata2.
The other interesting feature about the hitachi sata2 hdds is setting them up to operate in an adjustable "performance" to "silence" mode.  The hdds are default set at high perfromance but you can manually lower the performance to increase the silence of the hdds which is fully adjustable to your liking.  I tested the highest silence/lowest performance setting and you cannot hear the hard drive at all. 
Testing - I tested the 2 hitachi sata2 deskstars with the first result in sata1 mode, the second in sata2 mode, the third in raid1 mode and the fourth in raid0 mode.
First, a significant increase in raid0 over sata1, sata2 and raid1 with sequential reads and writes (PC Wizard).
Write: 28mb/s vs 29mb/s vs 27mb/s vs 53mb/s
Read: 45mb/s vs 46mb/s vs 43mb/s vs 83mb/s
Second, significant increase in sata 2, raid 1 & raid 0 over sata1 with buffered reads and writes (PC Wizard).
Write: 104mb/s vs 176mb/s vs 165mb/s vs 266mb/s
Read: 123mb/s vs 200mb/s vs 200mb/s vs 293mb/s
Third, significant increase in sata 2, raid 1 & raid 0 over sata1 with burst reads (HD Tach).
Burst Read: 133mb/s vs 225mb/s vs 219mb/s vs 334 mb/s
It is interesting to note that raid1 is better than sata1 but marginally slower in all tests over sata2.  Raid0 is significantly faster on all tests.