SATA drivers question

[xhail]

I am brand new to the world of SATA HDD's and I plan to order one within the next week. I roughly know how to go about installing the onboard SATA drivers during installation of WinXP.

I think I got it right. I first put the onboard SATA drivers for my P4P800 dlx on a floppy. Then I reboot using the WinXP cd and press F6 when it asks me if I have any drivers. I install the drivers and then my SATA HDD should be ready to partition, format and install the OS right?

If that is right, I have a question or two about the drivers. My computer does not have a floppy drive. I use a USB pen drive and a CD rom drive for most of my data backups and/or transport. Is it possible to put the drivers on the USB pen drive and have it install from there? If this is not possible, then if I were to make an ISO of the WinXP cd and slip in the drivers of the onboard SATA into the ISO and burn it, would I then not need a floppy drive?

Basically, I just don't want a floppy drive on my computer unless I absolutely need it. Thanks for any and all information regarding this subject. I would normally search, but it is not working :/

 

[Ice Czar]

I dont think the F6 option can be pointed to the USB at this time
(even if your BIOS has USB boot support)

as far as slipstreaming, that can be done
but I havent done it
http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/
and dosent employ the F6 option if Im not mistaken
rather the driver is added to the default SCSI drivers already present on the CD?

far easier would be to temporarily attach a FDD and then uninstall it
unless you need to do this 20 times or something (or install over a network)

the FDD isnt dead quite yet, Im planning on leaving out the FDD in my latest rackmount,
but Im going to try to forward the port to the rear of the case, just incase

 

[xhail]

That's kind of what I feared. Guess I will at least have to attach a FDD for now...