SATA Help! Windows XP Dosent see it!

[GunnerMan]

Ok well I am having more probs with this thing then I EVER imagined! My friend is getting very antsy and wants his comp and I cant even get WinXP on it!

Ok well its a Seagate 160 GB SATA hard drive on an ASUS A8V Deluxe Motherboard, now people say it should auto work so I try windows says Hard Disk Could Not Be Found Press F3 To Exit, so next I do the Press F6 To Load 3rd Party RAID drivers, I load everything ASUS supplied me on their support disk, same message so I left after 2 hours getting nothing done.

[the_autopilot]

RAID drivers are for RAID arrays and are not actually HD drivers. It is still a good idea to use a RAID 0 +1 as it can yield a performence increase.

SATA HD should work right off the bat. BTW, make sure the HD has power from the PSU.

There is a chance that the HD is defective, but that is exceedinly rare....but you could be having an unlucky day.

[GunnerMan]

Well I will try a different power connector and try.  Thanks and I will I guess try the HD in another computer and try it out, if I install windows on it with my computer at home will my hard drive still work when I put it back in? I will try and lisen to see if its even spinnin gup but if the BIOS sees it then im it must be powerd abd spinning up? I thought SATA was supposed to be easy??? Thanks...

[Skittles]

A SATA drive has TWO power connections. DO NOT CONNECT BOTH. This will prevent WIN from properly detecting the drive.

Did you also double check the boot settings in the BIOS to ensure the drive is in the proper boot sequence?

Joe

[Gixer]

Ok here is how i did mine.  In the BIOS I set boot of CD-rom.  I disconnected my IDE drive so only the Sata was in the system.

Stick XP cd in drive.  Stick Sata floppy disk in floppy drive.  Boot PC.

Thats it.  XP picked it up all on its own.  I have a socket 939 mobo though which is pretty new (MSI nForce3 one)

On my brothers you also have to assign it as an array, he has an MSI nForce 2 mobo (Barton CPU)

[GunnerMan]

Well it dosen let ma ssign an array but the mob is an ASUS A8V Deluxe(not the PCI-E vers.) well only have one power to it so  how shouldt eh boot devce priority be? CD, HD, Floppy or CD,Floppy, HD? Thanks this s really pissing me off :-/

[Gixer]

Ok I take it you are doing a fresh install of XP onto this drive.

In this case set the BIOS as 1st Boot device = CD-rom

Put the floppy disk with the sata drivers in the floppy drive.

Put the Win XP disk in the CD drive.

Turn on PC.

[GunnerMan]

Ok will try thanks fpor th help...

[Skittles]

For a boot sequence, I use Floppy, CD_ROM, HDD

[Gixer]

Skittles he cant do that yet. He is doing a fresh install and needs to boot from the XP CD.  If he sets to floppy it will screw up.

Also do you have XP skittles?  if so y set it to floopy?  you would never need to use it, it just slows down your boot time.  Once XP is installed set your 1st boot device to your HDD with your OS on it.

In my BIOS there is no choice to boot from Sata so I dont have anything selected in the 1st boot device bit, and it boots straight from my Sata drive.

[Skittles]

Skittles he cant do that yet. He is doing a fresh install and needs to boot from the XP CD.  If he sets to floppy it will screw up.

I know, I was just providing what I do. Hope I didn't confuse him.

Also do you have XP skittles?  if so y set it to floopy?  you would never need to use it, it just slows down your boot time.  Once XP is installed set your 1st boot device to your HDD with your OS on it.

No, I use Win2k and still use my floppy from time to time. My boot time is slow as it is with my 21 GoFlight modules, the floppy doesn't add much more time.

[Ivan]

[quote]Skittles he cant do that yet. He is doing a fresh install and needs to boot from the XP CD.

[Gixer]

R u serious about the 1-2min wait

my cold boot time is never over 30seconds.

I described the way I did to do this process because then it requires no keys to be pressed at all.  Just put disks in and leave it to it.  I have Raid, I didn't have to assign any array, I guess it all did it for me automatically  ;D

As said on my brothers older mother board I did have to assign an array but not on this one in my new system.

[Ivan]

Yes, it's that slow, read the reviews

It can be changed through a BIOS hack but i won't try that until i have a new machine (which should be there in September 2005)


The thing GunnerMan needs is in chapter 5 of his BIOS manual.
As i have been messing with computers since i was 12 i know almost any dialect of Engrish that exists, and to be honest, the explanation in the manual is as BAD as you can imagine...

[Gixer]

Yeah what is it with mobo manuals.  My one I got with my new MSI mobo was a load of junk!

It definately wasn't English!!  and the description of the stuff available in BIOS was useless.  They kinda worded so that if you dont know what your doing you can't do it.  Standard settings in my BIOS were rubbish too, I have a much faster system after optimising only a few things but they were quite important, unless you knew about them though you would be sat there going slow still though.