Paul, Sven, thank you for the input. I managed to install XP on SATA disk
(Seagate Barracuda) without any extra driver, although the xp installation
was prompting for "manufacturer-supplied hardware support (FastTrak
Driver) diskette. Dell didn't know which file it refers to, Seagate's disk
wizard didn't help, because as it turned out it was a hardware problem:
both the replacement HD and SATA cable were bad, but yet another HD and
cable did the trick. Is that SATA technology so unreliable or we just got
unlucky?

Irena.

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