I want to install win98se on a sata drive

[alex666]

Does anyone know how, or if it's even possible (given that you don't have the option to load drivers like you do when installing XP)? I've got an albatron mobo with on-board sata. I've easily installed XP on this mobo, but now I want to load 98se on a sata drive so I can easily switch back and forth (via the bios) between hdds that hold different OSes without major rearrangements of my system. Some of my son's older games working better on 98se than on XP. Thanks.

marty

[classicsoftware]

In order to dual boot, you will have install 98 first then install XP. Win 9X does not support dual booting without a third party boot manager.

[alex666]

Dual boot? I know how to dual-boot, but I'm not asking about dual-boot, I'm asking about installing win98se on a sata drive. Thanks for the input, but I think you misread my post.

marty

[classicsoftware]

Use the diagnostic/installation software provided by the hard drive manufacturer. They will provide a bottable disk/floppy that will allow you to partition the drive and install the OS

[alex666]

Classicsoftware, I appreciate your input but I think you are misreading my question. I have no desire to set up a dual-boot system. I do not want to partition my hdd. I simply want to know if I can install win98se on a sata hdd. I have no problem installing 98se on a pata (parallel ata) hdd, I'm talking sata (serial ata) hdd here. Thanks.

marty

[classicsoftware]

Marty:

As far as I Know you can install any OS on any drive you want. Since you need to load drivers, I'm sure the diagnostic/installation software will load these drivers. Consult the Hard drive manufacturers web site for the software. I looked in the FAQ's on the Western Digital site and saw nothing that would prohibit installation of Windows 98.

Please read this (http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/olh_adp.php?p_faqid=54)

[classicsoftware]

Western Digital on the other hand does not support SATA with Windows 98 read This (http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1099&p_created=1066928868&p_sid=wXQelesh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX 3Jvd19jbnQ9MjcmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnB fcHJvZF9sdmwxPTk1JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPSZwX2NhdF9sdmwxP SZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PTk4&p_li=)

[alex666]

I appreciate your diligence here. I learned something, that WD does not support anything less than 2K or XP on their sata drives.

Re. your comment about any os on any hdd you want, I'm not sure that is true. To install XP on my raptor in my system, which has a an on-board sata controller (kt-600 via chipset), XP required that I load sata drivers at the beginning of the install. As I understand it, for some sata controllers, you can install XP without installing those sata drivers, whereas for other controllers you must have those drivers available on a floppy disk at the outset of the XP install.

As for win98se, I am not sure you can install it on a sata drive, WD or otherwise. This was the first time I had heard of a specific hdd manufacturer stating that they don't "support" earlier versions of windows on their hdd (kind of makes you wonder how linux is installed). I always thought this was strictly a windows issue. So I appreciate the reference there. But it still begs the question of whether you can install 98se on any sata drive. Searching the internet has been confusing at best, and I have found nothing definitive.

In my main computer, I currently have XP installed on a raptor, which is a sata drive. This is a family computer, but our fastest, with a radeon 9800 Pro, kt-600 with mobile barton running at 13 X 200 fsb = 2.6 GHz. Some of the games my son likes to play do best with an earlier OS, like 98se. So last night I installed 98se on an older 30gig maxtor ide drive, but first I had turned off the sata controller in the bios and I detached the storage hdd which is on one of my ide channels. I then installed the maxtor to that channel and installed 98se. The cd-rw is on the other ide channel. Everything is running great, but it's a hassle having to physically detach the storage hdd. My thought was to install 98se on a second sata drive, and then simply turn off the raptor boot from the 98se raptor whenever I want to switch to that system. That way, I would not have to physically move the hdds. This may not turn out to work, but first and foremost I wanted to find out if it was possible to install 98se on a sata drive.

Sorry for the long explanation.

[Paul Komski]

Not sure why WD "do not support" windows pre Win2K for their SATAs since I have WinME installed and functioning just fine on a WD-SATA Raptor series. Would have thought is was more a matter of how the BIOS reports back from the mobo or other controller than anything else.

If Fdisk can see the drive from a Win9X boot floppy then I would suspect that you could partition and format and install normally just as you would to an IDE drive. To avoid any possible mistakes I would remove the ide and set the bios to boot from the sata before doing any partitioning or else partition the SATA (with an appropriate primary partition as FAT32) from the WinXP disk managment before disconnecting the IDE. It would also be easy to copy the W98 folder from the Win98 installation CD to this partition from WinXP before disconnecting the IDE. Then just boot to a boot floppy, navigate to the copied win98 folder on the drive and run setup from there.

If you cannot get the OS installed that way you could first install it on the (or on another) ide drive and to simplify matters do this to a single C partition on the ide drive (bearing in mind that you may make the winXP installation at least temporarily unbootable if it visible to the installation at any stage). Install all the mobo drivers etc and check that you can see the SATA drive from the Win98 installation on the IDE. You can then copy the whole partition (which now has all the relevant drivers installed on it) over to the SATA drive. Change the boot order to sata first and hopefully 'bob will be your uncle'.

You will obviously need some partitioning utility to copy the partition over in this way and if you dont have something like Partition Magic I would suggest BootIt-NG (BING) from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ which you can use for a month on trial. Download it and make the floppy; boot to the floppy but dont set it up on the hard drive unless you want to go that road. Just go into maintenace mode at the first opportunity and you will be able to partition and to copy/move and even image partitions straight from that floppy. You can also use it as a boot manager should you want to dual boot these two installations using either the floppy or by installing it onto the hdd.

Let us know how you get on. I have assumed you are installing directly to the SATA and not to a single-disk RAID-0 array - though that can be another way of making an "inaccessible" drive accessible. There is great variation between different mobos and controllers so this is still in rather "frontier territory".

[Paul Komski]

Only just seen that you had already posted a reply.

My thought was to install 98se on a second sata drive
A good thought but can you choose in your BIOS to boot to SATA 1 and to SATA 2 ?? - that is without swapping the cables round. Assuming you get Win98 installed on your SATA OK (and you could now just copy the new installation over from the Maxtor to a SATA). BING might still be a good way to multiboot a system with multiple mixed drives; if you decide to configure BING and have problems then let us know what they are.

[alex666]

I haven't fully read your long post (thanks in advance), but yes, the bios on this mobo (albatron kx600S Pro) allows the user to choose which hdd you want to boot from. Now I've only had the one sata hdd installed at any given time, namely, the raptor, but as I understand sata, there are no "channels", rather, the sata units function independently, so there should be no problem having both sata hdds each with their own OS in the system at the same time so long as I can designate the boot hdd. In theory, it should work, and it would make it real easy to go back and forth between OSes. Plus, I'm pretty sure you can simply "turn off" hdds in the bios as well, but I'll have to check on that.

As I type this, my 7 year-old son is having a ball playing some of these older games that he more or less was precluded from playing because of XP. He uses stuff on the XP drive, but having all this stuff on a separate drive with 98se is really nice on a lot of levels.

Finally, why are you mentioning partitioning. I use PM 8 a lot, but usually do not partition hdds that hold the OS.

Thanks all.

marty

[Paul Komski]

why are you mentioning partitioning
Mainly to copy a working IDE partition containing Win98 that recognises the SATA (has the correct drivers already installed on it) over to the SATA drive. PM8 should do this without blinking.