SATA HDD installation on K8N Neo2 Platinum, Non-RAID, Non-Bootable

Question

Hi-
I’m a rank newbie on this forum (first post). I have a K8N Neo2 Platinum Mobo, which I’ve recently gotten up and running, with Windows XP-Pro SP2 installed on a single IDE drive. I would now like to add 2 SATA drives. I don’t need or want the SATA drives to operate in a RAID array, nor do I want them to be bootable. I want to use them independently for data storage. I read the following thread (I am posting here on a separate thread per the author’s wishes not to get his original thread too junked-up) :
Single SATA or Multiple Drive Array Setup FAQ
I have not yet plugged-in either of my SATA drives, because I don’t want to risk corrupting my existing boot (IDE) drive. I just had a few questions about the procedure given in the referenced thread, in the Single Drive Setup:
- Step 14 States: “Make sure the “RAID Mode” is Stripping and Striping Block at 64k or Optimal. Hit F7 (Finish)”. Is this correct for a single non-boot drive?
- Step 22 States: “As most of you know when you enter the Setup for Win2k/WinXP you will need to hit F6 to load additional drivers for other SCSI devices.” I assume this means I need to boot from the Windows CD. Is this true even if I already have Windows installed on an IDE HDD on this system? At what point will I need to hit <F6> ? Will I be prompted to do so?
- I have downloaded (from the MSI website) the NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER & NVIDIA Nforce Storage Controller (20 files, 1.3 MB total). Should I put these on a floppy? Or can I access them from a directory on my OS HDD?
- Should I go ahead and plug-in both of the 2 SATA drives I want to add to the system before beginning the driver installation? The only reason I would consider installing them one at a time is if it eliminated any confusion between RAID vs. independent (I want independent operation). If I do install them one at a time, do I have to install the driver twice?
Any help would be appreciated.
- the bbdude

Answer 1

OK Thanks JeanGuy and ssjkakaroto,
I have connected both of my SATA drives. They are enabled in BIOS but not set to RAID. I booted up to Windows on my IDE drive. In Disk Manager, the display shows Disk 0 (C: System), Disk 1 and Disk 2 as uninitialized, and my DVD (D:) drive. At this point, I could probably go ahead and run the Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard to get these disks formatted and be dome with ot now. Before I do that though, I just have a couple of more questions.
- I had already loaded the nVidia nForce3 system driver prior to installing the SATA drives, but I went ahead and did that again after installing the SATA drives and restarting Windows. I used Live Update, which went out to the MSI site and found version 5.03 of the  nVidia nForce3 system driver. I'm not sure how to find the "Nvidia 5.10 driver package which include the latest SATA driver", ssjkakaroto referred-to. The Live Update install procedure did ask if I wanted to install IDE driver and I said yes. It then asked to over-write what I already had there (I said yes to that too). As the file names streamed-by, I though I saw some filenames with nv... listed. So, bottom line, is I'm not sure if I have the lates and greatest nVidia SATA drivers installed. How can I find out what drivers are installed?
- As I mentioned in my previous post, I have also downloaded and unzipped the NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER & NVIDIA Nforce Storage Controller (20 files, 1.3 MB total) from the MSI site; however, I don't know how to "install" this now that I have the files. There are a couple of .exe and a .bat file (bit no setup.exe).
I may already have everything I need to partition and format these drives. I just want to bve sure I'm not skipping a step that is essential to optimal performance.
Thanks -
- bbdude