New hard drive installation problems

UniqueID

UniqueID

UniqueID

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Joined
31 Aug 2006
Posts
225
Hey guys,
I recently bought 2 new hard drives, exactly the same, the maxtor plus 10 300GB SATA drive, and in windows setup it just cannot recognize the SATA drives, "windows did not detect any hard drives" now it says this at the very beginning of the setup.
Now i had a sata drive on here before, and i am using the same method of connection as i did the old drive, so it should work, but i did not install it last time so have no idea how it was installed.

I'll just list everything i have tried so far,
Checked the connection cables, the power, and to hear if the hard drives were spinning, which they were, and also heating up showing that they were working.
Tried swapping the SATA cables around several times in case they were not working
Checked the bios, which surprisingly didn't show any sata hard drive options even when i connect the old working drive (where it registered the old drive in POST in startup, but not the new), it only shows the cdrom as the primary master, and nothing else relating to hard drives.
Checked my motherboard for sata jumpers, looked in the manual, no sata jumpers.
Checked my hard drive jumpers, according to the manual, it is defaulted for working home use, and it checked out right on the drive too. but i am really don't know enough about hard drive jumpers, so i could be wrong.
I created a floppy 6 disk windows xp setup and used the motherboard driver disk, still didn't detect the drives.
I upgraded the bios with flashmenu from abit and tried the steps above again to make sure that its not the bios' fault.
Tried just adding one drive to complement my old drive, computer restarts on boot (blue screen of death shows for a slight second before restart).
I tried running a windows ME startup disk, and running FDISK, fdisk did not read any drives present.
I tried Running MaxBlast 4 and it wouldn't detect the disk.

i am really stuck at this point, i have no idea what to do. i have a working old sata drive so there should be no reason i cannot install these. if there’s anything else you can suggest that will make my motherboard see this drive, i will try it and tell you the results. Thanks.
 
yeah thanks flying grouse, i did try that though with a windows ME boot disk, and fdisk did not read any drives present. i'm still rather baffled :confused:
 
UniqueID said:
Hey guys,
I created a floppy 6 disk windows xp setup and used the motherboard driver disk, still didn't detect the drives.
Click to expand...

OK, I'm a wee bit confused by this bit - are you saying you created the driver floppy from the motherboard CD and did the hit F6 to install storage drivers at the start of the XP install and the drives weren't detected?

We really need a bit more info to help here.

1) What model of motherboard are you using?
2) How are the SATA ports configured in the main BIOS / RAID BIOS - the configuration here may determine what, if any, drivers are required
3) When creating the driver floppy are there options for different setups - RAID or non RAID for example
4) When you do the F6 thingy are there multiple driver options displayed when you put the floppy in?
 
here's my spec to help you out

O/S: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2
M/B: VIA K8T
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
Old H/D: Maxtor 6 L200M0
New H/D: Maxtor Plus 10 SATA 300GB 6V300F0

hi rpstewart,
1) the VIA K8T
2) there are no setup options for sata drives in the bios, but there is a raid bios which only sets up a raid for the drives, the raid bios did not detect my new drive either.
3) no =(
4) yes, the via raid drivers and the silicon 3112 and 3114, and intel.

i used the program which you can get on microsofts website to create 6 winxp setup disks, i used them and pressed f6. and used the sata driver disk from via, it had a lot of RAID drivers on there; the via raid drivers and the silicon 3112 and 3114, and intel.
after trying each driver individually in setup, i tried loading them all at the same time in the setup by just selecting them all, and still did not reconise the disk.
- I also used maxtors maxblast boot disk which said there was no drive.

Starting to think there is something wrong with the bios, but it is the latest version and has no options referring to sata :(
 
I wouldn't worry about the main BIOS not having any SATA options, it looks like all the SATA stuff is controlled through the secondary SATA BIOS. The problem is, however, that the RAID bios isn't detecting the drive which is a tad worrying. Until that sees the drive nothing's going to work.

First step is to try and establish if the new drive is working. When you boot the PC with it attached can you feel/hear the drive spinning up? Do you have another PC or a friend's PC that you can try the drive in?
 
wizardmaxx said:
Your problem is most likely a sata ii problem. does your board support sata ii. if not then there should be a jumper setting on the hard drive to set it to sata i. ;)
Click to expand...

Had the same problem recently when i put a western digital sata 2 drive in my av8,had to set the jumpers on the drive to sata 1.
 
ah, sata 2 combatiblity, i'd never have thought.. well the manual on the website said you shouldn't have to worry about the jumpers, but if like you say wizardmaxx and muckymick that you have had the same problems i should try changing the jumpers. atm i have no idea how to do this properly so i'm going back to the manual. i'll tell you if my hard drive blows up or not :D
yeah thanks rpstewart the drives are whirring and producing heat so i hope thats a sign they are working properly.
 
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