My hard drives are SATA, but my BIOS is set to disable SATA mode (a legacy of pre-SP XP, which is stil on my drive in another partition). I've read that if I were to enable SATA in the BIOS, XP wouldn't work unless it were reinstalled. Is the same true of Windows 7 beta? Or should it continue to work (without reinstallation) if I turn on SATA mode?

Windows 7 can be installed on SATA...if it prompt for drivers. Locate IDE/SATA controller drivers via USB device or CD/DVD during installation.- Ramesh Kumar

Gary02139 said: My hard drives are SATA, but my BIOS is set to disable SATA mode (a legacy of pre-SP XP, which is stil on my drive in another partition). I've read that if I were to enable SATA in the BIOS, XP wouldn't work unless it were reinstalled. Is the same true of Windows 7 beta? Or should it continue to work (without reinstallation) if I turn on SATA mode?I really don't see any problem unless you're attempting a SATA RAID. Most motherboards do some fancy translation that makes your SATA devices look like their IDE/PATA. Hence, you'll see IDE channel 1 w/a master and slave, IDE channel 2 also with master/slave, and then one independent Master channel for each SATA port you've got. Secondly, if you've got SATA drives, how were you able to install XP (or anything for that matter) if SATA was disabled...?

Without actually getting a glimpse of his BIOS screen, I'm going to guess that he put the SATA system into IDE emulation mode. Some BIOSes are confusing about what they call these things. Probably what he's thinking is that he can turn on SATA/AHCI mode, and let me tell you from experience, that would be a disaster resulting in blue-screens at boot time. There are ways around this (I've gone from SATA IDE emulation to Intel onboard RAID even though many told me a full reinstall was required), but this requires installing the OS on another drive with SATA/AHCI mode enabled, seeing what some registry entries are set to, copying them and installing them on your other drive.I would recommend to the poster that they leave their BIOS alone. Just remember to enable the real SATA mode when it comes time to reinstall the real released version of Win7 later this year. Win7 comes with all those drivers on the install disk so it is super easy to do.

>I'm going to guess that he put the SATA system into IDE emulation mode.Yes. Sorry I was unclear about that.

Ramesh_Kumar said:Windows 7 can be installed on SATA...if it prompt for drivers. Locate IDE/SATA controller drivers via USB device or CD/DVD during installation.Right, but Windows 7 is already installed. My question was whether I can now switch the BIOS setting from IDE-emulation to SATA-mode without having to reinstall.Asylum's response persuades me that I should leave the BIOS along until I need to reinstall Windows 7 anyway. Thanks!

Yes. Just make sure you now have the drivers loaded for your SATA controller. If so, you should be able to reenable your SATA controller or bring it back into AHCI mode from ATA mode. You should not have to reload at all.

Gary02139 said: Ramesh_Kumar said: Windows 7 can be installed on SATA...if it prompt for drivers. Locate IDE/SATA controller drivers via USB device or CD/DVD during installation. Right, but Windows 7 is already installed. My question was whether I can now switch the BIOS setting from IDE-emulation to SATA-mode without having to reinstall. Asylum's response persuades me that I should leave the BIOS along until I need to reinstall Windows 7 anyway. Thanks! HiTo switch from IDE to AHCI mode after W7 in installed do this:1. Load W7 with controller set to IDE mode2. Install AHCI/RAID driver3. Reboot and load W7 again (in IDE mode yet)4. Wait to get message that your drivers are installed, but you need to restart before to use them ( this may take few minutes)5. Reboot and enter bios6. set controller in AHCI mode7. Load W7 ( in AHCI mode already)