Installing SATAII Hdd - HELP PLEASE!!

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:20

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

melbourne720 · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:28

Win XP spotted my Sata drive automatically, has your install CD got SP2 on it? Try it without the drivers, it may find it on it's own.

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:33

bah! sp1 disk :eek:

melbourne720 · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:37

Just a guess, but the number of things that were fixed in SP2 I wouldn't be surprised.

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:40

going to try setting it to ide in bios and format from there.

melbourne720 · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:48

Boot from the IDE drive and then format the SATA2 drive you mean?

555BUK · 28 Feb 2007 at 16:49

From memeory, you need to do the following when using an old XP install disk.

1). Download the SATA drivers from your mobo manufacturers website and copy to floppy.
2). Boot WnXP CD and press F6 when instructed to load 3rd party drivers.
3). Select drivers listed on floppy.
4). Proceed with WinXP instalation as normal.

steve258 · 28 Feb 2007 at 17:28

melbourne720 said:
Boot from the IDE drive and then format the SATA2 drive you mean?

From BIOS you usually have the option to emulate SATA drives as normal IDE devices in case your OS doesn't support SATA drives.

valerian · 28 Feb 2007 at 17:30

555BUK said:
From memeory, you need to do the following when using an old XP install disk.

1). Download the SATA drivers from your mobo manufacturers website and copy to floppy.
2). Boot WnXP CD and press F6 when instructed to load 3rd party drivers.
3). Select drivers listed on floppy.
4). Proceed with WinXP instalation as normal.

as this guy says

MooSey-UK · 28 Feb 2007 at 17:48

i set it to IDE mode and xp disk recognized it.
trouble is its a 250GB drive and xp has chosen to see only half and so its only formatted half.
xp then loaded its rubbish on and changed my boot.ini giving the new disk priority!

i've since fixed the bootpath but now in windows itself i'll have to reformat the whole thing again.
also i don't remember seeing the oppotunity to create a 4 GB partion which i expressly wanted to do for my pagefile.

bah! at least my boot hdd with xp is working properly. i'll have to sort it out another day.

i had hoped to get oblivion installed on the new disk today as well. the plan was to have xp on my 80GB EIDE 133 hdd, data on my 120Gb 100 EIDE and page file and oblivion (partioned) on my new SATAII 250GB spinpoint to provide a faster gaming drive only.

i guess i'll have to reset it back to SATA mode in bios then via the disk management tool with control pannel reformat the drive to its full size then partition it.

if anyone can tell me exactly how to do this i'd be very grateful.

im off for a quick game now before she gets home

thanks for your pronto and informative help, further assistance equally accepted with n00b gratitude