PC not seing SATA Hard drive?

[beast]

I have just removed my old IDE drive and fitted a Maxtor Diamond 10 160GB. It's SATA-2 apparently? Anyway I located the primary SATA connection on my motherboard and used the SATA cable that came with the board to connect to the HDD. I then connected the SATA special plug off my PSU to the Drive also.

I then started windows up off the CD (a 2003 copy of XP) and it' s not seeing the hard drive. Why is this? is the HDD faulty or is it something to do with it being SATA?!

 

[rpstewart]

Basically windows setup doesn't have the drivers for your SATA controller as it's currently configured. You've got two ways round this:

1) Pop into the BIOS and make sure that the SATA ports are configured for Non RAID / IDE Emulation or whatever your particular BIOS wants to call it. This might not be available on older boards

2) Give windows the drivers on a floppy. Press F6 when prompted at the very start of the install and then 'S' to add new storage controllers when prompted later on. The drivers should be on the CD that came with your mobo or you should be able to download them from the manufacturers site.

 

[thefishdude]

had same prob on when building a sandy 3700 system just the other day. and yep its cause the board dont have sata drivers built in. i had to get a copy onto a floppy and put that in at same time as the windows disc and like guy above said just press the button when it comes on screen.

also is your board sata 2 capapble if not you may want to change the jumper setting on the back of your new hdd to sata1. as sometimes problems can occure in not seeing the full size of the disc.

 

[beast]

Thanks chaps. My board is SATA-2 compatible. I'll burn the drivers from the disc to floppy if I can. I haven't got a floppy in my new rig, didn't think I needed one Hindsight's a MOFO, as they say

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Thanks chaps. My board is SATA-2 compatible. I'll burn the drivers from the disc to floppy if I can. I haven't got a floppy in my new rig, didn't think I needed one Hindsight's a MOFO, as they say

You could burn the drivers to a boot CD or perhaps use a USB device but having a floppy drive makes the job a lot easier. When I need a floppy drive on my floppy-less rig I borrow a friend's USB floppy drive.

 

[rpstewart]

You'll need to put the drivers on a floppy or use nLite to integrate them into a slipstream copy of the XP install. You can't use a CD or USB key for the drivers, the setup program can only look to a:

 

[beast]

Aaargh! Stuck my floppy drive onto the Mobo and it says not recognised. For God's sakes what can I do now I hate PC's they suck.

 

[rpstewart]

what can I do now

Fully star out the sweary for a start.

Are you sure you have the right drivers on the floppy? Some boards have more than one SATA controller and some controllers have different drivers depending on whether the drives are in RAID mode or not.

Did you follow the process of pressing F6 at the beginning of the install then "S" after the initial set of drivers have loaded?

 

[beast]

Okay getting there now

First problem - Floppy not enabled in BIOS

Second problem - Floppy still not working
Borrowed my old man's floppy (obligatory joke here) and it's reading the disc but not writing.
Back to my old man's PC, swapping the drives again, the floppy isn't formatted
Formatted disk, and it's wrote the driver to it. Woot! added this in windows setup by hitting F6, Now in the partition screen. CASHBACK