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I need help in installing from scratch (from Dos or at bootup) a 160gb Maxtor SATA HD on Asus A8N SLI Deluxe mobo.

Will install winXP SP2 after format & partition.

Have "Seagate Disk Wizard" on floppy, will this work on Maxtor ?

thanx       luke

You should have a MaxBlast utility disk that came with it - either floppy or bootable CD. If not, you can get the utility from their website.

First format the disk with MaxBlast so the XP setup will recognize the disk, then format again during XP setup During the setup you will be asked for partitions sizes and format.

Thanx W_M,
I got floppy MaxBlast but it would not work from Dos!
So I trusted Seagate one and went the long way:
1. used "Seagate Disk Wizard" on floppy
  to partition &  format the 160gb Sata Maxtor,
2. used 6 floppies, created with:-          
"WindowsXP-KB310994-SP2-Home-BootDisk-ENU" (forSP2)
  from:-http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/
  which asks for the XP CD & installs it.

I will need a lot of help to tune the MSI6600gt128, but even so after installing the CD drivers what a change on fs9 from my old 10mb Sis Gfx card!.

Another one now, why did my IDE maxtor 80gb would not be recognised by the new Asus mobo? That would have made life easier by migrading all to new HD.

any help appreciated,                    luke

Bios; Phenix Award / Asus ACAPI Rev 1006

First of all, is your 80gb IDE HDD recognised in the system bios?

Yes it was recognised and shown on startup, infact both the IDE & the Sata were refered to as "Master", any thing to do with this? Did I forget something?

When it came to boot-up though, it gave a very fast flash of a blue screen with writing, and went to reboot.

luke

Yes it was recognised and shown on startup, when it came to boot up though, it gave a very fast flash of a blue screen with writing, and went to reboot.

luke

Sounds like a hardware conflict. Are you wishing to use the 80GB IDE HDD as a slave?

I've just installed a 40GB HDD in a similar setup today, if you don't mind the 80GB one being wiped; I think I can give a little 'walkthrough' on how to prevent driver conflicts etc.

Is it also from an old system?

Stephend,

I think you read my last post as I was modyfying it, did you see this bit? "...infact both the IDE & the Sata were referred to as "Master", any thing to do with this? Did I forget something?....."

When I returned  the IDE to the original PC worked fine, actually this posting comes from it.

The IDE is from my original PC, and would like to perhaps attempt one of those Raid1 things the book ays, where everything is written on both HD giving safety if one fails.

Failing that I'll leave it where it was for the wife and networkit for backing up things from mine.
luke

Stephend,

I think you read my last post as I was modyfying it, did you see this bit? "...infact both the IDE & the Sata were referred to as "Master", any thing to do with this? Did I forget something?....."

When I returned  the IDE to the original PC worked fine, actually this posting comes from it.

The IDE is from my original PC, and would like to perhaps attempt one of those Raid1 things the book ays, where everything is written on both HD giving safety if one fails.

Failing that I'll leave it where it was for the wife and networkit for backing up things from mine.
luke

I don't think a IDE HDD and a SATA HDD can work in a SATA RAID configuration.
2 SATA HDD's is needed to do this.

I might be wrong though.

Yep, all hard drives in a RAID array need to be same size. Preferably identical drives from the same manufacturer if you want to avoid problems down the line. So you need all SCSI or all IDE, same size/spec and from same manufacturer preferably.

Fast reboot on A8N-SLI: Install service pack 2 or it won't go past the startup screen.

And don't ever install the nVidia IDE drivers


And some extras:
1: connect the PATA drive after doing WinXP install, or it will act weird when booting up.
2: If the board doesnt detect the maxtor drive, go to your computer shop and have the firmware updated. Maxtor, old firmware + 16MB cache gives problems on the nforce4

Thnx Ivan,
The Mxtr 160gb Sata is running fine on Asus

I'll try again the 80gb IDE drive on Asus now the XPsp2 is running.                     luke

Ivan, with winXP installed on Sata & the Asus CD run on it, the 80 gb IDE is recognised and shows on win explr.

Just for info, on the 160 Sata, when I add up the Gbts of each partition (in decimal ie 39.521gb + 40.06) total comes to 158gb, is the balance used by the HD system?

Bang goes then my hope to Raid Sata & IDE for safety.

luke