SATA drives

[gazzagazza]

Hi I'm considering building a new pc. A mobo Im interested in has sata connections.Can I boot Windows from sata drives only or will I still need an IDE drive still to boot from? I heard someone say you cant boot from SATA drives.
Secondly ,Im thinking of getting an athlon xp2600 barton. What wattage of psu will I need ? Will 350w be sufficient? I'm not sure what graphics card Im getting yet so have not taken that into consideration fully.
If anybody has a link or table that can help me calculate the wattages of the various components I'd be garteful.
Many thanks
Gazza

[stroyal]

SATA boot just as well as IDE, I have two in a RAID 0.
A quality power supply @ 350 would be enough if you don't have a lot of drives running at the same time.
400 or up will give you some reserve.

[Shawn711]

Here's a link that will calculate power usage for you....... Power Supply Calculator Also, I use a SATA Western Digital 160 Gig to boot from on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe.

Shawn

[rpertusio]

Further Info:
To boot from a SATA drive, you'll need to have the SATA drivers installed. In most cases..Windows would consider a SATA drive much like a SCSI device.

When you start a Win2000/XP install, simply press "F6" when booting from the CD. When prompted, pop in a floppy disk with the SATA controller drivers. (This lets Windows Setup talk to your drive.) The drivers can be found on the manufacturer of your motherboard (or add-in card if you are using a card.) If you do NOT press F6 and install the drivers, Windows setup will not even see that the drives exist.

Once the drivers are installed, you can boot to it without any problems. You may have to set your BIOS boot order to 'SCSI' to boot to the SATA drive.

If you need any more clarification, let us know!
- rp

[gazzagazza]

Thank you very much for the info folks. I feel much more confident now!