SATAn

Who'd have thought installing a SATA disk would be so much hassle?

I was installing a fresh Windows box with a Seagate 120 GB SATA disk for system drive. First of all, making Windows find the bloody thing during installation required illogical BIOS settings. (SATA RAID off). The same setting made the disk unbootable. So either run the system with an empty disk, or fill the disk but don't run the system.

Oh but you can specify a SATA driver during installation by pressing F6 and having a floppy handy. Yes, a floppy, who uses them anymore? So take down all machines and move floppy drives around. :( Ok, now we got a floppy. Put in CD, press F6, select driver, wait wait wait. Everything installs. But, still no go. Find a forum post that says the floppy that comes with the mother board is sometimes not the right one! (Great ABit, great!)

Well it finally works! Only 3 hours spent on a non-problem.