Is their a way to install the VIA control driver for the SATA drive on to a West Dig drive util floppy to test the driver without trying to load an OS ? other than pressing F6 during the install of the OS.

I ask because ive brought a SATA drive thats know bad, and i was unable to use the West Dig drive util to test the drive, i could test the drive only when an OS was loaded.

Fdisk and other dos-based utilities should be able to see and access the drive using int13 from the bios without any special drivers.

The NT-based oses need the drivers just during the installation - something to do with not being PnP, if memory serves.

Hi Paul,

DOS see the drive on startup, Setup doesnt see the drive untill the VIA controler driver is loaded at the start of XP install.
West Dig drive util will only see the drive after the OS install has finished.

Don't know which version you are using but v10 didn't see my SATAs at all - but v11 of the Data Lifeguard Tools on Floppy worked fine with them (tested both of them individually just fine even when mirrored as RAID-1).

You can get the download from http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?swid=2