I am building a new PC for my Dad's Christmas present...mostly from leftover parts shed during Sprocket's neverending metamorphasis.
Not a barnburner, but a definite upgrade from his current POS Compaq, the machine will drag him kicking and screaming into (semi) modern technology.
As I planned the project, I ran across my stash of Serillel PATA to SATA adaptors (come with NF7-S boards) and thought "Aha! This will make for clean cabling to the optical drives..." so I decided to use them.
Indeed, they do make the case interior neater by replacing the bulky IDE cables with thin, easily routed SATA cables.
As I sat admiring my finished machine, a thought occurred to me.
Installing Windows onto a SATA HDD (which this PC has, BTW) requires loading the SATA drivers first thing, or XP can't recognize the drive.
Would the optical drive be similarly hidden from XP ( making the whole process impossible) without the drivers, too?
I figured what the hell, and proceeded to fire her up and see what happened.
Worked perfectly.
So my question is:
How come the CD-RW drive was functional before the install of the SATA drivers when the HDD is not?
There is prolly a very simple answer to this, but I don't know it and would like to.
Educate me, please.
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