Resolved new HDD not seen in device manager after setup

I am a new user of these forums.

I have an interesting problem: I have an old XP Pro computer with 2 120GB HDDs that I installed 2 new (additional) 1TB HDDs in and re-installed XP to erase all the data on the old main and aux drives. During XP setup, the four drives were all available as unallocated space, which I just used the default NTFS partition scheme on and completed the XP setup without error. My problem is that now only one of the two new 1TB drives show up in the device manager and HDD manager. I am pretty well experienced in computer setup (built several desktops and servers over the years) and I am completely at a loss with this one. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,

Eric

 

Do the drives all show up in the bios?

Are the drives Sata or IDE? If IDE make sure you have the jumpers set correctly for Master on the end of the cable and Slave in the middle.

Can your motherboard support 2 x 1TB drives, please supply the motherboard details so we can check.

 

OK, I guess that info would be helpful... The 2 120GB drives are IDE and the 2 new 1TB drives are identical SATA drives. I installed the XP on the same original 120GB drive the old install was on after a re-format. I have the new HDDs on SATA0 and SATA1 on my MB (Asus P5NSLI). There are a total of 4 SATA ports available. I am not at home at the moment, but when I looked at the BIOS last, they were all there. I will double-check that when I get home tonight.

Thanks!

Eric

 

Did you install Sata drivers during the XP installation.

 

I was just reading the MB users manual online and saw that SATA drivers thing. The drives are the Western Digital Blue WD10EAL and they were bare drives. Are you saying they need a driver from WD to work? Why then is one of them there and the other one is not? Alternatively, do you mean I need to go into the BIOS and enable the SATA features? I will check jumpers and BIOS Settings when I get home, but I am almost positive they were set correctly. Thanks for the help, you have given me some things to check out for sure. I appreciate it.

Eric

 

Do you mean the F6 thing? No I did not.

Eric

 

The F6 thing is correct. You will have to reinstall XP to do this. You will have to download the drivers to a floppy from your MB site.

This guide will show you how to add the drivers to a copy of your XP disc which could be usefull if you have no floppy drive and to simplify the driver installation in the future.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

 

No problem doing the re-install, since I haven't done anything with the computer yet. However, if I have the CD that came with the MB, are the drivers I need on there? Can I just install them in the current install of XP that I have? Otherwise, when it asks if I want to install third party drivers for SATA/Raid Configuration, press F6 and it will ask me for those drivers, correct?

Eric

 

Unlikely, OS's after XP have SATA drivers included they are not (AFAIK) included on the MOBO disc. You should have installed that disc immediately after the OS install.

No, they have to be installed during installation when it asks if you want to install third party drivers for SATA/Raid configuration.

 

Right,
So the drivers you are speaking of are not the ones included with the MB. So I need to get the SATA drivers from the link you posted above and install them with the F6 command during XP setup. Thanks for your help on this. I will do my homework when I get home and post back when I have a result.

Thanks again,

Eric

 

Correct.

No, you need to get the SATA drivers from your motherboards site. The link I gave gives instructions on how to integrate the drivers onto a copy of the XP disc, or you can use a floppy if you have a floppy drive.
And yes, you install them with the F6 command during setup.

 

ok, thanks, I couldn't view the link here, so I wasn't sure what the link went to. I will post up after I play around with it for a little while when I get home.

Eric

 

On the Asus site, the only driver download for my MB that is close is the "make RAID tool." That is the one I need?

 

Well... Everything is up and running. All my disks are present in disk management and the new partitions are formatting. However, the PC only booted, not went to setup, with the XP CD in the DVD ROM. I took the CD out and rebooted, and the BIOS loaded and then it went to the black screen with just a cursor blinking at me for about 20 min before I gave up and rebooted with the XP CD again in the DVD ROM. What is missing in the boot files? Do I need to change the boot order to HDD --> CDROM from CDROM --> HDD? Kinda funny... Again, any help is appreciated.

Eric

 

Every PC that I have and have worked on, I always leave the CD/DVD drive as the first boot. Nothing there and it just goes to the HD anyways if it is set as second boot.

 

So, you have re-installed XP but it won't boot without using the XP disc? I have assumed you re-installed to the same IDE drive?

Did you install the Raid drivers from a floppy or did you make a new XP disc with the drivers included?

Have you installed all the drivers off the MB disc?

Having CD/DVD drive as 1st in boot order should be fine.

You should also check that the SATA drives are set up for Raid operation in the Bios and not IDE and check that the IDE drives are correctly set.

Try setting the boot order to 1st for the disc with the OS on just to see if it will work.

If you still have no boot at startup I can only guess the MBR is corrupted which I have never heard of on a fresh install but use this instruction to fix it and see what happens.

You have explained what is not working but it helps if you can explain how you got there and confirm all the actions you have taken e.g. how you installed the Sata drivers. Then I won't need to ask

 

Right. My experience as well. That is why it seems weird to me...

Eric

 

Just filling in the blanks... When I booted it when I got home, all four drives were there. The plug and play balloon popped up right when Windows first started for the WD10EAL. I installed MB drivers and rebooted. That was the time it would not boot w/o the XP CD.

More later...

Eric

 

This should already have happened the last time the PC was booted, something is not quite right here.

Please confirm all your actions, as asked, I still don't know how you installed the SATA drivers or if you have actually reinstalled XP.

Check the drive letter on the OS drive, it may have changed, it should be C:

 

When I got home last night, Iturned on the PC, and all four drives were there (in device manager and disk manager). The plug and play balloon had popped up right when Windows first started for the WD10EAL drives. Then, since I had not gotten to installing the MOBO Drivers, I did that, then shut down. I powered on the PC and got the no-boot situation. Then I powered on with the XP CD in the DVD ROM drive with the intention of reinstalling XP fresh. To my surprise, the PC booted directly to the desktop, not to the XP Setup. Since everything was there, I removed the XP CD from the DVD ROM and went into disk manager and set up my partitions on all four drives (started them formatting). The main (system) drive is still called drive C:. To this point, I have not intalled any raid drivers. I downloaded the files from my work computer onto my usb thumb-drive and took them home with me to put them on a floppy (no floppy at work). I only have a floppy on the PC that is having the issues, and the file that downloads from Asus is a .rar, and I cannot extract the data from it on that PC... By the time I get home tonight (or maybe tomorrow morning) the 1TB drives should be done formatting (they were at 40% each on the last partition on them [~420GB each]) when I left for work today.
So... when they are done, I will try rebooting with no XP CD in the DVD ROM drive. If it goes to the blinking cursor on me and I put the XP CD in the DVD Drive and it boots to the desktop, can I run fixmbr from the command prompt that I can get to in the XP shell, or does it have to come from the cmd prompt that initiates from the XP setup?

Thanks again for your help, I think we can get this fixed. Sorry for not being as explicit as I should have, I know you know it can be hard to remember to put all the details down, when a hundred things are running around in your head

Eric