Pata to Sata

Marmaduke · #1 07-10-2007, 05:00 AM

Hi all. My son is running out of room on his 300Gig hard drive. Currently he has a 300Gig Pata hard drive as master, and a 500Gig Sata. Motherboard is a Asus A8N-SLI. Dual booting Windows XP Home and Vista. My Only option is a 750Gig Sata Hard drive. I plan on using Acronis True Image to transfer the data from the 300Gig to the 750Gig. I've used this software before. It works.
My question.... If I go from the Pata to Sata, Will the drivers for Sata automatically install since Windows XP is already up and running? This will become the boot drive.
Thanks for any help.

pip22 · #2 07-11-2007, 02:36 PM

No they won't install automatically. SATA drivers are provided by the mainboard manufacturer, or the manufacturer of the SATA controller; they are not included with XP so how can it possibly install them automatically? XP needs to know where those drivers are located before it can install them.

Marmaduke · #3 07-12-2007, 04:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pip22

No they won't install automatically. SATA drivers are provided by the mainboard manufacturer, or the manufacturer of the SATA controller; they are not included with XP so how can it possibly install them automatically? XP needs to know where those drivers are located before it can install them.

Thanks. I'm missing something here then. I mentioned my son has a 500Gig Sata drive which has Vista on it. I had no problems installing that drive on his computer. I plugged it in, formatted it with the Western Digital Tools software and that was it. Computer and Windows XP recognized the hard drive. I never installed any Sata drivers for it.
I'm trying to find out if I switch the master boot drive from Pata to Sata will it automatically setup this Sata drive as the boot drive?

plthayer · #4 07-20-2007, 12:51 AM

You shouldn't have any issues with this at all. Windows xp doesn't need the sata drivers installed but it is usually recommended that they are because certain features may not work correctly without them.

Just to clarify, which drive is the boot drive right now?

If it's the PATA drive just be sure that you install the new drive on the primary SATA port so the system doesn't try to boot from the other SATA drive.

If you have any questions let me know.

Marmaduke · #5 07-20-2007, 04:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plthayer

You shouldn't have any issues with this at all. Windows xp doesn't need the sata drivers installed but it is usually recommended that they are because certain features may not work correctly without them.

Just to clarify, which drive is the boot drive right now?

If it's the PATA drive just be sure that you install the new drive on the primary SATA port so the system doesn't try to boot from the other SATA drive.

If you have any questions let me know.

The PATA is the boot drive now.

plthayer · #6 07-20-2007, 04:50 AM

Then all you should have to do is copy the drive to the new drive using Acronis and be sure the new drive is connected to the primary SATA. As far as the vista installation goes the boot loader should be on the primary drive so it SHOULD ajust to allow vista to boot after it's been moved to the secondary port. If for some reason vista won't work after you're done let me know and i'll give you instructions on editing the boot loader.