HELP! need to install and format SATAII disk before missus gets home!

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:19

Noooooooooob questions here from a SATA virgin.

i've just got a SATAII Hdd which i want to format and parition.
am going to put pagefile onto 4GB partion and use the rest for games.
already have a EIDE Hdd with XP on and a slave EIDE data storage.

I've loaded the SATA drivers for mobo (Asrock 939 dual VSTA).
when i boot from XP disk it does'nt see new SATAII drive not giving me option to format and partion.

How do i do this? do i need to drag my floppy drive out to make a boot diskette?

Help please. i wanted to get it done and sort pagefile out then load oblivion + mods before the missus gets home

james.miller · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:22

control panel >> administrative tools >> computer management >> disk management.

you should be able to partition and format from there

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:33

ooh thanks im off to try

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:36

nope.

disk management does'nt see it, only EIDE drives.
its present and enabled in device manager though.

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:41

going to try setting it to ide in bios and see if xp disk locates it.

mconnaola · 28 Feb 2007 at 21:06

Hi,

rpstewart gave me this advice it might help you.

OK, we need to get it showing in that section of the BIOS before the drive is going to be available to Windows. There are a couple of main possibilities at this point
The SATA controller is disabled in the BIOS
The controller isn't doing the speed negotiation with the drive properly and it needs to be set manually

The first one is the easiest to check. On the Integrated Peripherals BIOS screen there should be an On-Chip IDE Configuration sub menu. On that menu the ATA Configuration option should be set to P-ATA+S-ATA, the S-ATA Keep Enabled should be Yes and Configure S-ATA as RAID should be No.

If those are all set correctly and the drive still doesn't show on the main page then you'll need to check the disk itself. There should be a small 8 pin jumper block to the right of the SATA data port on the back edge of the drive, are there any jumper caps across any of the pins?

Kind regards,
mconnaola

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 22:04

set it to IDE in bios and it was recognized by xp install disk.
all i wanted to do was use the xp disk to format and partition.
1stly it only saw 130gb of 250gb so partioned without me wanting that
2ndly it only formatted the 1st partion
3rdly it created another bootpath to this disk.

i've fixed the boot path but am left with a partitioned disk half formatted.
i want to unpartition it, format the whole 250gb then put in a 4gb partition for my pagefile.
the rest is only for games.

any ideas?

it is now recognized as a disk in xp but only showing the partioned 130gb section.

Duke · 28 Feb 2007 at 22:22

You need an XP disc with Service Pack 1 or above to allow single partitions over 130GB.

rpstewart · 28 Feb 2007 at 22:56

MooSey-UK said:
set it to IDE in bios and it was recognized by xp install disk.
all i wanted to do was use the xp disk to format and partition.
1stly it only saw 130gb of 250gb so partioned without me wanting that
2ndly it only formatted the 1st partion
3rdly it created another bootpath to this disk.

i've fixed the boot path but am left with a partitioned disk half formatted.
i want to unpartition it, format the whole 250gb then put in a 4gb partition for my pagefile.
the rest is only for games.

any ideas?

it is now recognized as a disk in xp but only showing the partioned 130gb section.

Now that the disk is recognised go back into Disk Management and sort it out the way you want. If you want to make a separate partition for the pagefile then make sure it's at the left hand edge of the graph in Disk Management, this is the fastest part of the disk.

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 23:30

yep all done now.
never used the disk management tool before, now i know

pagefile on fastest part.
hopefully less loadcell stutter in oblivion now :cool:

thanks for your help.