[webe3]

OK, I know that Microsoft is still two years away from making Longhorn or whatever it will be called, but mabye you can tell me any info you know, about what I am going to ask... OK? I am wanting to know if the new Longhorn operating system will include NATIVE DRIVERS for Serial ATA hard drives like the western digital raptor?

The reason I ask, is because I just bought this drive a few months ago,(40 gig version) but had to pull it from my system, because I got tired of the way it was acting! I kept getting repeated blue screens and finally was not even able to REFORMAT it anymore! Yes, I could just use fdisk and repartition it and then format it, but it was acting so badly I just pulled it and that was that! Not to mention the fact that I bought an OEM version of the drive AS WELL as being talked into using the NTFS file system, which In had never used...I just use FAT 32....slower, but stable enough for me!! I wish a THOUSAND TIMES OVER I had of gotten the RETAIL VERSION, because all that came with the drive WAS the drive itself! NO DRIVERS!!( The retail version comes with the hard drive a 3.5 driver disk and a serial ATA card, at least that was what their tech support told me!) So, the guy that put in my Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard MADE a homemade 3.5 driver disk from the files on the Asus A7N8X Deluxe CD that came with the motherboard! I finally just pullled it out and went with something I know and trust and has never failed me. A 40 gig WD 7,200 RPM drive! One that I DON'T have to load drivers into windows whenever I have to reformat! That just drove me CRAZY! (I DID NOT KNOW you had to loade the stupid drivers in to windows when you reformatted when I bought the thing!) I don't mind drivers for a sound card, video card, etc. But a HARD DRIVE? No Thanks! So....will the NEW Longhorn have native support for this drive and others like it? If it will I may wait and keep this raptor drive I have and use it with longhorn. If it does not, I would rather sell it and be done with it!

To be fair though, the drive was not the only thing causing the bluescreens! For one, I just had installed by a professional an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard and the RAM eventually turned out to be bad! BUT I had replaced the hard drive with my 7200, hoping it would stop the bluescreens, BEFORE I eventually replaced the RAM and finally stopped the bluescreens for good! (what happened was the BIOS on the A7N8X Deluxe WAS showing the two micron 512 2700 sticks as functioning properly, but that board is so picky about memory I had to take those two sticks back to the store I bought them from and replace them with two oither 512 sticks of 2700 SAMSUNG memory! I not only changed the sticks but the brands!) So It IS POSSIBLE that what was causing the bluescreens the whole time was the incompatible RAM I had on the motherboard, but that old saying applies "if it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!" So I am not about to put that 10,000 RPM raptor back in my system unless I have an operating system that supports it natively! I don't like putting on drivers for a hard drive anyway! I would just rather use what I have, even if it is a little slower and try to make do until Longhorn comes out or a patch to XP is added (SP2 mabye?) That adds native support for Serial ATA hard drives! My question is....willl SP2 or longhorn have this native support for Serial ATA????