Since you have not yet received a reply to your inquiry, I will try to 
help. This should be a relatively painless process. Install the hard 
drive and the controller card and connect the data and power cable. 
However, you may find that the available power connector from the power 
supply does not fit the SATA drive and you will need to get a simple 
adapter (the "power cable" you mention may be for that purpose). Start 
the computer, check in the BIOS (check the Dell manual for directions) 
and set the CD-ROM as first in the boot order, put the XP disk in the 
drive, and continue the boot process. The XP installation should begin 
and, during the process, it should offer to set up your hard disk, and 
then it will continue the installation. It is fairly user friendly and 
accepting the installation recommendations is probably best for a 
novice. XP may request the driver off of the CD for the controller card. 
Also, without a second hard disk, you do not need the RAID function to 
be active.

As a caveat, I have no direct experience with SATA drives, XP Pro, and 
RAID controllers. I hope that that the foregoing is helpful.

Tom


Ronn Cross wrote:
> i have a DELL PENT IV 2.6g missing the hard drive. I purchased A seagate baracuda 7200.10 250 gbytes SATA. unknown to me my ribbon data cable would not connect. I have now purchased a SATA RAID controller card(CreativeI/O) with data cable & a power cable.I'm quite sure I can physically install the hardware, but I'm lost about starting up the controller card, adding drivers,putting back on XP pro. Also I had to purchase a rescue disk for xp pro from DEll. I hope this makes sense...as you can see I am a beginner novice.
> Any or all help would be highly appricated.....ronn
>
>             
>   

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