SATA Drive Not Recognized

I have an ASUS P5-GD1 mobo (running WinXP SP2) which has both IDE and SATA hard drive connectors.

The C (and only) drive is an IDE and I want to install an 2nd drive - ie. 500 GB SATA.

I have connected the SATA data cable from the h.d. to one of the 4 SATA connectors on the mobo and of course also the power connector.

When I power up the PC, it starts as usual but I can't see the new SATA drive. It's getting power and I can feel it spinning but Windows isn't finding it - ie. can't see it in Explorer or "Disk Management" doesn't show it.

I had a quick look in the BIOS but didn't see any obvious menus to 'turn on' the SATA drive - and I don't want to mess around without knowing what I s/b doing - for fear I'll disable my IDE C drive...

Hope someone can point me in the right direction.

 

The sata drive should have come with a CD with drivers and the such. Did you run that? For a better word, it gets the drive "ready ".

Also, check the jumper connections.

 

The drive may be completely blank and does not have a boot sector that contains the drive information. Use the drive manufacturer's setup utilities to partition and format the drive. Hill mentioned a CD or you can get the utilities from the manufacturer's website.

Matt

 

I could be dead wrong but it is doubtful that the correct motherboard and SATA drivers are going to be found on any CD that may have come with this drive. If you don't find any SATA drivers on your motherboard disc (ASUS usually includes a "make driver" utility on their MOBO CD's), you can head over to the ASUS site and download the following:
IT8212 ATA RAID Controller driver V1.7.1.9 and Application V1.7.1.10 for Windows 2000/XP(WHQL)/2003
Install this and then go into computer management and then disc management to detect the drive and format it from there if necessary.

 

Hi Rockster,

I (we, Hill and I) do not mean the drivers for the motherboard/chipset. We are talking about the utilities for setting up the HDD.

Gemo does not say which make or model of HDD is being used.

The utilities I(we) am talking about are those from the HDD manufacturer's CD or website, eg, Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, Hitachi, etc.

Checking that the SATA Controller drivers sounds good.

Another possibility here:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc...y5zZWFyY2hfZm5sJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1
Of course, that applies to WD drives and you would need to refer to the HDD manufacturer if it was not WD.

Matt

 

RE: BIOS

I have attached a screenshot of the Main Menu in the BIOS settings. Is the new drive listed? It should appear under the third or forth IDE listings. The detection should be automatic (if the settings have not been changed from default).

If the drive is listed you should just need to follow Rockster's suggestion.

Matt

 

Hello back to you Matt,

If the correct SATA drivers are not installed, the drive will never be recognized. In this particular situation, the IT8212 ATA RAID Controller driver V1.7.1.9 and Application V1.7.1.10 for Windows 2000/XP(WHQL)/2003 must be installed for the drive to be recognized. SATA also has to be enabled in the BIOS.

I'm not sure I understand why one needs any HDD mfg utility to set up a HDD - Windows can format the drive from Disc Management. The problem here as I understand it is one of drive recognition.

Not meant to be offensive, I just don't understand where the HDD mfg. utilities fit in the puzzle. Then again, I don't use them much so maybe I need some education.........

 

Greatly appreciate all the good comments, suggestions and advice.

FYI - the new drive is a Wetern Digital 500GB.

Interestingly I stuck (into a SATA port on the mobo) the 500GB drive into another PC (emachines) that had an IDE C drive and when I rebooted the drive was recognized.

Will still keep playing around with trying to get my Asus P5-GD1 mobo to see this drive -- Somewhere, I'm sure I have the CD that came with the mobo and I'll try and dig it up and see what it has for "SATA drivers" (?) - but not sure exactly what to look for or how to load them...

In the meantime however I took the easy path and am using a USB enclosure to interface this 500GB drive to my Asus machine (and other PCS)!

 

Just as a follow up on this. I have had more than one occasion where a brand new drive is not recognised by the BIOS (IDE drives though). The only thing that would "see" them was the manufacturer's utilities. After setup (partitioning and formatting) with the manufacturer's utilities they were recognised and worked fine. My guess was that they had not set up before leaving the factory and were completely blank (no boot sector). If I get time I wouldn't mind testing this by Zero Formatting an old drive and seeing what happens when it is connected into different computers.

Gemo has the drive recognised in another computer and as an external drive so it is not the case here.

Some other instances I have come across are the utilities suggesting that the data cable may be faulty or the wrong settings have been made in the BIOS. Once I was having trouble with a Windows installation. When I ran the utilities it said that the partition had been made with one too many clusters (larger than the physical size of the disk).

I normally use the Windows method, but I always use the manufacturer's utilities if I suspect any possible problems with the drive setup.

Matt

 

Thanks Matt.