Windows Install On Sata?

[Johannes]

So im looking at buying a new comp soon, im looking at varius parts and stuff, but 90% of all motherbords only seem to have one ATA channel, this would mean that all my HDDs would need to be SATA, but will windows (Win XP Pro SP2) detect various SATA controlers? Or will i have to choose a custom controler driver (which is OK as long as it works)

Any ideas/comments on this?

PS; the hardware im looking at is currently a Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0GHz AM2 2MB, and probably some Asus Motherboard... (not sure about the rest)

Thanks

//Joh

[shanenin]

Every motherboard I have come across will allow you to either run your SATA drives in "SATA mode" or "IDE mode". This is set through the bios. Unless you need to use raid, their is no good reason to use "SATA mode". I don't think their is much if any performance difference. The huge benefit to using "IDE mode" is XP will load natively without having to load SATA drivers during the install. The bios must emulate the SATA drives as IDE(just guessing)

[Johannes]

Thanks,

My current motherboard doesnt have such functionallity, a seperare bios chip detects and configures the HDDs. But i guess what saying could be a possibility, but im thinking that it must slow things down then.. But it could be used when installing windows or something...

I guess i will have to buy the stuff and hope installing will work or something...

Anyone else have experince with installing windows on sata devices?

[shanenin]

I found this. The one thing you will be losing if you run your drives in IDE emulation is a feature of SATA called Native Command Queuing. Under some circumstances this can increase performance, but in others like gaming and sequential reads & writes, it can actually slow things down. It is something to think about.