Installing Sata Drives.....?

happy_2008 · 14 May 2007 at 11:31

Just received my Gigabyte DS3P Motherboard over the weekend and tried to install my old HDD's onto it but it would boot purely because my old C Drive was dead. Anyway, so i have another storage HDD also taken from the same old computer but for some strange reason bios cannot find this HDD :confused:

I have always read that you need to install Sata drivers for these but i have never had to do this with these HDD! In the past when i come to install Windows XP it will always detect the HDD but when i come to do it this time, it says that it cannot detect any HDD when there is definately one plugged in :mad:

Any ideas

basmic · 14 May 2007 at 12:16

You need to create a floppy disk with the SATA drivers on, and tell XP install to use those drivers when it asks you to "Press F6 to install RAID and SCSI drivers" at the beginning of setup.

This is what you need: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Driver_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Driver&FileID=3100

happy_2008 · 14 May 2007 at 12:47

But in the past i have literally just plugged them in and off i went without doing that process :confused:

EternalMovement · 14 May 2007 at 13:29

Check to see that "sata achi mode" is off and "onboard sata/ide ctrl mode" is set to ide in the bios.

happy_2008 · 14 May 2007 at 13:38

Do they have these options on the DS3P Motherboard.....? Will try that when i get home, if that fails what are my other options?

Trippynet · 14 May 2007 at 14:02

The disk your using is XP SP2 isn't it. SP1 and earlier had very few if any SATA drivers provided on the disk.

killer_uk · 14 May 2007 at 14:19

happy_2008 said:
Do they have these options on the DS3P Motherboard.....? Will try that when i get home, if that fails what are my other options?

You will have that option, my DS4 has it. Just set that and your SATA drives will work as IDE so you don't need to install drivers at the XP setup.

happy_2008 · 14 May 2007 at 14:32

Disk i was using was before SP1

Trippynet · 14 May 2007 at 18:26

That will be why then. Get hold of an XP disk with SP2 already on it, or slipstream SP2 onto the disk yourself and then try installing from it and hopefully it'll then spot your SATA drive without any problems.

rpstewart · 14 May 2007 at 22:02

The version of XP on the disc has no bearing whatsoever on whether the SATA drives will be detected natively by the install. All SP1 and above gives you is 48bit LBA for partitions greater than 137Gb.

Whether your SATA installation will need drivers is determined by how the SATA controllers are set up in the BIOS:

Legacy / IDE Emulation - No drivers
SATA Native / AHCI - Drivers required
Any form of RAID - Drivers required

killer_uk · 14 May 2007 at 22:09

rpstewart said:
snip

While you're here, just a quick question, and I apologise to the OP for going a little off topic, but is there any performance difference between having it Legacy IDE Emulation or SATA Native / AHCI?

happy_2008 · 14 May 2007 at 22:56

Tried the above and everything was fine on the motherboard.......? I got a gut feeling that the old computer took both HDD's with them

basmic · 14 May 2007 at 23:34

happy_2008 said:
Tried the above and everything was fine on the motherboard.......? I got a gut feeling that the old computer took both HDD's with them

You tried loading up the drivers that I linked you to earlier, and loading them up into XP setup when prompted?