K8N-E Deluxe - Using 3 SATA Hard Drives.

[Dazzington]

Hi there,

I have an Asus K8N-E Deluxe, and I have bought a third hard drive (WD Caviar 250GB, to join my WDC 160GB and 200GB), and I want to be able to use all three hard drives, without setting up a RAID array, so I can safely use them independently. In the centre of the mobo, there are two SATA ports, which I have my two current hard drives plugged into, and at the bottom of the mobo, there are 4 "SATA RAID" ports, the first of which I have tried to plug my new hard drive into. The drive shows up in the "Hard Disks" section of my BIOS, but does not show up anywhere in Windows, including Disk Management.

Does anyone, particularly those with experience with this mobo, know how I can use three SATA hard drives on this?

Many thanks in advance. This thing is driving me mad. I need the space, and I have the hard drive, I just can't use it.

Darragh

 

[mosfet]

Have you formatted it? RAID won't be enabled unless you do so in the controller BIOS.

Since it's not showing in Disk Management I'm guessing you haven't installed the SATA controller drivers. Have you still got the CD or floppy that came with your motherboard? If not, go to the ASUS website and look up the model, then download the drivers and install.

After that you'll need to format using something like Partition Magic.

 

[Dazzington]

I'm already using two SATA drives, so SATA is working OK, and I've tried installing the RAID drivers aswell, but to no avail. I've tried Partition Magic, but the drive isn't showing up in that either.

 

[Topitoff]

The 2 SATA ports you are using are the NV ones in the chipset; the extra 4 are Silicon image ones from a separate chip on the board and the SI driver must be installed for these to work.

 

[Dazzington]

I tried installing the Silicon Image drivers through device manager, instead of through the disc's AutoPlay menu, and......success!

Formatting in Disk Management right now! Thanks a million, fellas!