Installing xp on sata drive, can I boot from card reader to install sata driver?

[calitoni]

My pc died on me and due to a lack of spare cash I bought a cheap pc. It is a AMD Athlon 64X2 dual core 3600+ and it came with only 500mb ram. It also has vista pre-installed. The pc was so slow, I thought this was probably due to the lack of ram, so I bought another 2g ram (total 2.5g ram) but the machine still takes ages to do anything, if I am running a file convertor then I cannot surf etc.
I have a legit copy of XP pro and would like to install it on this pc instead of vista. I am assuming from what I have read that it is not possible to simply put the xp disc into my pc once vista has loaded and simply 'upgrade' (or downgrade) to xp.  I have downloaded all the xp drivers for my current pc, however I am far from an expert at this.
The problem is my pc uses sata drives and I have read that xp cannot install on a sata drive as it does not contain the drivers for sata. I do have a floppy disc that came with a raid card and the floppy contains sata drivers, but my pc does not have a floppy drive so I can't boot from the floppy to load the drivers first.
I was wondering whether it would be possible to copy the drivers from the floppy to a memory card and load them by booting from the built in card reader prior to booting from the xp disc (is it possible to boot from a card reader?).
Another option is that the pc has 2 hard drives, is there any way I could install xp on the second drive, load all the xp drivers and then use acronis to clone the drive onto the main drive, or create an image of the second drive and unpack it to the main drive.
I don't know that much about pc's so what I am proposing may sound stupid, in the end I may have to get hold of a floppy drive and temporarily install that in my pc so that I can load the sata drivers but I wondered if there was another way.

[squall_01]

That is simply not true, you can install xp straight to any SATA drive.

[calitoni]

That is simply not true, you can install xp straight to any SATA drive.

Now I am confused, if you google 'uninstalling vista and installing xp' you get loads of sites all saying the same thing. Here is a quote from one of them:

'The most important step is to find out if your hardisk is using SATA interface (if so you will require the SATA XP drivers and a floppy disk, as this is the only way that XP can install these drivers.)'


The quote was from this thread
http://www.pctipsbox.com/how-to-remove-vista-or-install-xp/
but there are loads of others all saying the same thing.

[squall_01]

There maybe problems from down gradeing from vista, but its possible to install xp on a sata.

[patio]

It won't boot to a card reader unless the MBoard supports booting to USB devices.
However it should be able to see a USB flash drive with the drivers on it.

Very early on in the XP install you will see a prompt on the bottom of the screen that says "press F6 to install RAID/SATA drivers...hit F6 and point it to the flash drive.

The problem you are going to have however is XP will detect the Vista install and prevent you from proceeding. So you will need to find a way to format that drive before proceeding.
You may want to remove it and hook it up as a slave in another machine and use Disk Management to do this.

Make Sure you Format the proper Drive.

Have you collected all the XP drivers for that machine especially the MBoard drivers ? ?
You are going to need them.

[calitoni]

Thank you for the replies. I have a raid card in another pc at work and it supports sata, I was planning to remove the drive from the vista pc and connect it as a third drive on my work pc, I can then format it, put it back in the vista machine (although it will no longer have vista) and then boot with xp disc in it. Does that sound ok?
At the stage that it xp asks if I want to install RAID/SATA drivers has it already installed the USB drivers?
I will disconnect the 2nd hard drive completely in the vista machine whilst I do this.
I have downloaded all the xp drivers for my machine from the manufacurers website so I think I should be ok.

Thanks for all the help.

[patio]

I would instead of going thru all that just format the drive and in the installation of XP when it prompts for the SATA driver just point it to your thumb drive that contains the drivers...

[calitoni]

I would instead of going thru all that just format the drive and in the installation of XP when it prompts for the SATA driver just point it to your thumb drive that contains the drivers...

Thanks again patio. I misunderstood your previous post where you said this:

 'The problem you are going to have however is XP will detect the Vista install and prevent you from proceeding. So you will need to find a way to format that drive before proceeding.
You may want to remove it and hook it up as a slave in another machine and use Disk Management to do this.'

Were you just talking about if I tried to 'upgrade' to xp? I thought you meant I couldn't format the disk even if I booted from the xp disc. Sorry if I am being thick, but if I can format it in situ, why were you saying to hook it up as a slave in another machine?

[squall_01]

Probably instead of downgrading and haveing to go threw the trouble of running into problems of some kind.  If you tried to install xp without formating the drive.  Since windows is built off the previous versions only with improvements there are bound to be issues.  Yes, however I recommened you get a seperate formatter program and use it or try using the xp cd to format the drive as is.  Try the cd first.

[patio]

squall, you're not reading...the XP CD will not allow this. Vista will block any attempt to have an older OS installed.
It will neeed to be formatted on another machine.

[squall_01]

I did read what you posted.  But I never know of a drive that you had to take out of a working machine in order to format it.

[patio]

You're giving advice beyond you're level of expertise. Vista blocks an install of older OS's.
We appreciate you helping just make sure it's something you have had experience with  so the OP and others benefit from it.
Inaccurate advice can do more harm than good most times...

[squall_01]

It shouldnt preventing him from formating the drive.  Like with f-disk or seatools or something.  I know that if you forgot the hardware topic.

[mr_skipper24]

1. Login into the BIOS of your computer and change the 1st boot device to you CD/DVD ROM save then exit
2. insert the XP CD and boot from the CD/DVD ROM
3. it will start copying the files and on the process it will ask you to reformat the hard drive. format the hard drive of the computer and after that it will ask you to install the XP
4. follow the steps and your done. 

[calitoni]

Thanks for all the help. I was planning to do this today, but my wife is away with her university on a field trip and with three kids to look after I ran out of time. Can't do it now until Tuesday but I have the whole day off and the kids are at school, I will let you know how I get on. I will try to format it in the pc, and if that fails then I will remove it and format it in another machine. Once again thanks for all the advice.