According to WD's documentation, your board does have one of the problematic chipsets that may have issues detecting the drive unless jumpered to SATA1.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_ … vZlBoeDdvcG0%3D

However, newer WD drivers will default to SATA3 rates (even though there appears to be no reason to do so), and the same jumper only lowers them to SATA2 rates, which may not be enough. So I am really not sure.

Generally, it is said that there should be full backwards compatibility, but maybe WD's method is not fully compatible with everyone else? I recall most manufacturers have no jumpers for the drivers, and things are just expected to work.

The WinXP problem is a different thing. Even if the BIOS recognizes the drive, XP may not. The native XP install in principle has absolutely no drivers for SATA controllers and will only recognize those that can emulate a legacy ATA mode (like all the Intel ones, for example). If your BIOS has no settings for that, then probably your controller does not support the compatibility mode, and XP will probably not recognize it. You will either need to supply a driver on a floppy during install, or slipstream one into the XP installation media.

I do think it is still possible to get new PATA drives, although it isn't easy / cheap.

I give up. May as well junk a computer after three years and get a new one - that's what they want you to do

ncmark wrote:

If the drive is not recognized, than how could the install even start? How could you get to the point of installing drivers?

That's the plug n' play way of doing things. Back before it was commonplace, you just installed the driver, rebooted and hoped it would pick up whatever fresh device happened to be there. Some drivers didn't care to perform even a basic detection routine; they just tried the access the device and trusted the user would have done everything that needed to be done.

I'm not saying this is likely to happen today, but technically speaking it is still possible to install a nonfunctional driver under the right setup.

I guess I should stick to my old PATA drives. But thanks for the replies.

That motherboard has VIA KT600 chipset? I recently played around with a Gigabyte board with the same chipset and can share my experiences.

On the board I used, only drives, that have the jumper for SATA I, worked. SATA II drives, in SATA II mode and SATA III drives won't even show up in the BIOS.

I ended up using an older Western Digital drive, 640 GB I believe, that had such a jumper support. Set to SATA I mode, it got detected fine by the BIOS. So was unable to use a modern 2 TB or SSD, but older drives, with SATA I jumper, worked. Intel boards from that period are better with SATA compatibility. Must have been a VIA thing.

Regarding SATA and drivers needed to install XP. On older machines, like yours, but also on newer machines like board with nForce 4, the SATA ports will just operate like IDE. No special drivers are needed. None of these early boards support AHCI. Some DO support SATA RAID, in those cases, you either put the SATA driver on a floppy, and load it by pressing F6, or you slipstream it onto the disc with nLite.

Also note that modern drives won't align correctly if partitioned and formatted under Windows XP. So I stick them into a USB dock on a modern PC, and partition and format it there. When you install XP, just select the last option when it comes to formatting the drive, and it will be aligned. There are tools that can align drives on Windows XP, but it's easier to sort it out earlier.

If all fails, you can use SATA to IDE adapters. They are cheap as chips and work great.

If you want a PCI SATAII adapter check out the Highpoint 1740 (Check out http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/cs-series_rr1700.htm). I have one of these in use on an old P4, currently running an SSD, but has previously run 2x1TB WD Blacks in RAID0, bootable as well. Somewhat limited transfer rates due to the PCI bus but still a pretty big upgrade over PATA. You might have to look on eBay as you can't get these new.

I always forget about PCI SATA controllers. There are other models from Silicon Image for example. Great support, all drivers on the website. They can be had for little money. SiI 3114 for example.

I installed Windows XP on a 128Gb SSD attached to a Promise SATA PCI card and SIL3512a Card. You just need to slipstream the controller driver into your installation CD/DVD. You can use nLite to do this. Also, SATA is by specification supposed tot be backward compatible and this is true with most modern SATA drives. VIA made a really shit controller though. Try to get a Silicon Image or Promise PCI controller card.