SATA HDD detecting worries

Hello,

I decided to ask you for help here, because I'm at a complete loss.

After purchasing a new Western Digital Cavior 120 GB SATA HDD I cannot make it being detected by Bios! I spent 5 hours to try but in vain...

To begin with, I have an Asus Motherboard (model A7V8X). Onboard ATA Boot ROM and Onboard ATA device first are _on_.
The new HDD was connected to primary ATA on the MB and power supplied.
The other IDE HDD was unplugged. Plugged stayed cd-r drive (sec. master) and dvd-rom drive (sec. slave).
Then I put the Windows XP Pro SP2 installation CD into the bootable cd-r drive. Windows didn't detect the HDD so I pressed (after rebooting) CTRL +F to install Promise FastTrack drive from the CD which came with my motherboard. An array has been created and I even saw something like 120xx meaning probably the size of my new HDD.
After rebooting and trying to install Windows the same problem happend, ie - no HDD available.
In Bios only the bootable CD-R drive is visible, no HDD although the settings are on [Auto].
I went even further and downloaded "Silicon Image SiI 3x12 SATALink Controller Driver Installation" from the WesterDigital home page. It also didn't help. "FastTrak TX4000/S150 TX Series Driver" dowloaded from WD home page didn't help as well.
When I connected my IDE HDD again I cannot see the new HDD either.

Please, help me!! What am I doing wrong??

 

I had a problem like that once with a new seagate drive. In the end it needed to be formatted and we used, I think, PowerMax or MaxBlast to format it. Also when installing windows press F6 to load the controller driver otherwise Windows will not detect the drive.

 

That's an application which can be used with a Maxtor HDD - mine is Western Digital Caviar.
I'm still unsuccessful. I get an error message when trying to read the drivers from the floppy after pressing F6.
But it should work when I'm logged in Windows and want the new hdd to be visible, but it simply doesn't work. I regret having bought that SATA hdd. I don't need faster hdd access but it's too late.
If you don't need to have a SATA, then beware of it! ((

 

I have used the Maxtor application successfully on brnads other than Maxtor.

 

Ralfska:

You'll probably need to extract those drivers to a floppy, not just try to copy them. You can probably also fnd these on the CD that came with your motherboard and my guess is that there will be a read me file on the CD with very specific instructions to guide you along. The drive (SATA or even your IDE) doesn't need to have anything on it, not even a valid partition to be detected by your BIOS so the drive overlays or WD Tools or MaxBlast Tools (be ye pro or con) will have no bearing on this problem. You can also check to verify whether or not there is a motherboard jumper setting required for the SATA drive to be used or detected. I can almost guarantee you (no I'm not going to look it up but you can) there is a BIOS setting to enable or disable the SATA controller. Lastly, if you don't use F6 and the correct drivers during your install , you'll never get this drive setup as a system drive (assuming that's what you were shooting for).

If you don't want the drive, you can send it my way and I'll let you know how much you would have liked it.

 

Rockster2U:

I extracted the files from pdc20376.zip to the floppy but after pressing F6 and mounting a floppy, I can choose Promise WinXP FastTrack 376 but after that this messages pops up:
"File \WinXP\fasttx2k.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2113 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c. "

D: would be my bootable CD-R Rom but when I put my SP2 slipstreamed CD Windows installation disk, there is no such file. I also put my original Windows XP Pro disk without any SPs.

 

ralfska:

I'm at a loss as to why your error but have another thought that may or may not be worth trying. Although I'm not that familiar with Promise controllers, the ones I have seen usually have a couple of different options in the BIOS (on board promise controllers) relating to how you plan to use your drives attached to them. One is a RAID option (I know, you're not going to use RAID) and the other is a family of drives (something like that) on the older controllers and some other nomenclature on the more recent ones. You might want to look around in your BIOS re: these settings. Wish I could be of more assistance in this regard but just haven't done enough Promise controllers to remember the details - they did seem odd to me but once set properly, ran just fine.



After thought - If you are having problems with your slipstreamed CD, do you have another optical drive you can substitute temporarily to do your install?

Big Time Edit Just re-read this thread to see if I missed something. Sure did - earlier you referenced SIS controller, more recently you reference Promise controller. Unless you have 4 SATA headers, you've only got one SATA controller and I'm at a loss now to know which one it is. That would explain your error if you are trying Promise drivers and you have some other type of controller.

Second Edit - false alarm, you do have the correct drivers if that is the correct designation of your Board.

 

Finally managed!

Rockster2U:

Thank you much for trying your best to help me. The problem where not in the sort of the drivers but I kept doing a simple mistake which I wasn't aware of:
The Promise WinXP FastTrack 376 driver delivered on the Asus cd was suitable but I didn't know that the bootable cd-r rom drive had to be the FIRST booting device. It was the second and the first was the floppy drive.
When I pressed F6 and mounted the floppy I kept getting this: "File \WinXP\fasttx2k.sys caused an unexpected error (18) at line 2113 in d:\xpsprtm\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c. "

As the matter of fact, the needed Promise driver was being searched on the floppy but the rest of the drivers was on the Windows installation cd. I didn't realize that Bios wouldn't switch to the next booting device automatically as it normally does.

One more question:
I have two HDDs now: the new 120 GB (SATA) and the older 40 GB (IDE).
I partitioned the first into 2 partitions: a system partition (15 GB) and the rest of free space would be my second partition. Is it OK, when the both partitions are **primary** partitions? I'm not going to install more than one operating system (only WinXP Pro). I'm about to reformat the old HDD so that it has only one partition. Will it be also a primary one?

Thanks once again!!

 

Regardless of how you got there - glad to hear that you have arrived. As to the partitioning, what you have suggested will certainly work and you'll probably get a lot of opinions on other ways to set this up. Its all a matter of preference.