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Name: Martyn999
There is probably a really simple answer to this and I'm about to prove my stupidity, but I've never quite seen the reason for needing a SATA driver. When installing Windows, if you don't press F6 to install one off a floppy then it can't see or use the hard disk at all.
So, it loads the driver from the floppy to memory so that it can access the disk. So far so good. However, after installing Windows upon future reboots you don't have to keep providing the floppy each time; and the driver is obviously not stored in RAM as this is lost on shutdown.
Thus, the driver must be installed on the disk itself. Now, if Windows can read the disk to obtain the driver so that it can read the disk... Surely it doesn't need the driver?
Can anybody explain why this is the case; I've searched on google for a while to no avail, and it's one of these things that bugs you until you find the answer!!
Thanks in advance
When you hit F6 and supply a floppy with the SATA drivers on it that floppy isn't immediately accessed. After Windows performs a hardware check and actually starts intalling the OS the flopy is then accessed. You need to leave the floppy disk in the drive until prompted to remocve.
So, to answer your question the drivers are installed as a part of the OS just as other hardware drivers are.
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So Windows can actually access the disk and read files on it (i.e. the driver itself) without needing to use the drivers? Thus they are merely used to improve performance as opposed to providing control over the hardware?
If so, does the installation simply say it cannot see the drive as a precaution then, so that it won't install if no driver is present?
Cheers
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No, if your system needs the drivers then you must supply them. Some systems can run the SATA CONTROLLERS in a IDE compatibility mode. When windows first starts it is relying on RAM to check hardware.
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>> Thus, the driver must be installed on the disk itself. Now, if Windows can read the disk to obtain the driver so that it can read the disk... Surely it doesn't need the driver? <<
The driver is read from a floppy disk and stored in memory. Once the driver is in memory it can be used to access the hard disk. It is then written to the hard disk during the rest of the installation process. Part of the driver will be incorporated into the MBA just to get things started.
Stuart
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Ah right so basically a small part is written to a location that can be read without needing the driver, which then provides the driver so the rest can be accessed?
Sorry for all the questions, it's just a bit confusing!
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No, it reads in the driver from the floppy and 'installs' it in memory. It is then able to access the drive and write the driver to the disk. It also sets it up so that driver will be installed from the hard drive on each boot thereafter
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When you first enter set up a virtual drive is created from RAM and all the set up files are copied to the virtual drive and then the SATA (3rd party drivers are installed also on the virtual drive and the harddrive is allowed to be partitioned and formatted and the computer is rebooted. The virtual drive with set up information is then used to copy all the files from the installation source to the harddrive/partition!
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Thanks for all the feedback, but what I'm trying to say is that each time you boot Windows MUST be reading a part of the hard drive just so it can obtain the driver to allow it to boot.
The floppy is obviously not present, RAM will be empty, so the hard drive is the only place where the driver can exist. Thus, Windows is able to read the area of the disk where the driver is located without needing to do it through the driver. If this is not the case, its a catch 22 - Windows can't load the driver from disk as it needs the driver to be able to read the disk to load the driver..
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Any hardware that the BIOS can recognise can be accessed by the OS. This method was the basis for previous versions of Windows. At some point (Win98 I think) Windows started to take over some of the control of the hardware in order to use it more effiecently.
This is done to speed up, control switching, and to conserve energy. The BIOS hands off control to the OS. The issue with the SATA controllers is that the OS predates the advent of SATA. Therefore no SATA controllers are integrated into the OS.
The BIOS does recognise the SATA controllers as they are written into the code for the BIOS. At the point in the startup when the BIOS hands off control of the hardware to the OS Windows loads some basic hardware commands into memory. You may have noticed that as Windows loads you have only basic graphics displayed. This is done to insure compatibility across the hardware spectrum. The SATA controllers are handled in the same manner. Just as there are many different graphics hardware devices there are also many different SATA controller devices.
Once the OS actually starts it enables the various drivers for the particular hardware configuration that it is running on. This is when the custom SATA driver is loaded from the harddrive.
I hope that I explained this process clearly enough so you understand it is not a catch 22. Rather more like shifting from 1st gear to second or high.
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