SATA Hard Drive help...

~Rob

Baseband Member
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Put a new system together today. Everything went smoothly apart from the installation of a Maxtor 250GB SATAII HDD. The BIOS sees it but it seems to want to boot on its on terms. It took several of what appeared to be system hangs on various stages of XP setup to get a copy installed, it then decided it wasnt going to boot past the loading screen of XP on startup and after about 5mins of the little green bar doing its thing, restart and try again...

Figure I only need to install drivers if its in a RAID array, right? XP install sees it and lets me format to NTFS etc, when it lets me get that far into setup..lol

Anyways, I'm thinking its a bad en', as XP went in on my old 2.5GB IDE drive (all 2.24GB of install :D) but as I've never played with SATA before, I wanna check before I send it back and end up looking like a right tool.

Mobo: Asus A8N SLI (has SATAII support)
250GB Maxtor Daimondmax 10.. (should'a bought a Seagate :()
 
I think SATA support was only added in XP SP1, so if you're trying to install an XP version before this, then maybe that's why it won't work. Try pressing, I think it's F6, when prompted at installation setup, to install the driver.
 
Sorry, should of added its XP ome with SP2 I'm using.

I did press F6 the first time around but it wanted a Floppy disk that I didnt have and a couple of steps later new the drive was there anyway. confused:
 
You need to install the drivers.

Get hold of a floppy drive, and the drivers should have come on a floppy with your board. If not, you should be able to download them off the nVidia site.

Try that and see what happens.
 
without this floppy win xp will see your drive but will not recognise it as a storage to load windows so when the install begins it will automaticaly go to your other drive and not the sata drive.when you get this floppy do as the other guy says press f6 then after installing it own drivers windows will ask for the floppy again and you will press s to install additional storage drivers.but he floppy may have about 4 drivers on it you must consult your manual to choose the correct one.you would be better taking the other drive out while you do this as it may not install windows as a c:\ drive it may see you old drive as c and sata as d just something to think about.sounds complicated but its not once you have done it once.stick with it as sata is the way forward.
 
Thanks guys. :)

The IDE drive was only added after I couldnt get the SATA working. The Maxtor was OEM so theres no drivers there and the Motherboard just has the usual driver CD. But I do remember seeing options to create Nvidia RAID drivers and what not, so I guess we'll give that a try. If not, I'll google for Maxtors website.

Will let ya know how it goes!
 
you will need that floppy driver for sata dont go into raid unless you know what you are doing you need to sata drives the same sise for thie raid array not one.you should be able to download the drivers onto a floppy from your mother board website not you hard drive website what is your motherboard make
 
Its an Asus A8N SLI...

Just checked the Asus site and cant seem to find any mention of SATA drivers. However I have checked my Motherboard CD and I have options there to create both a PATA Driver disk and a SATA RAID Driver disk. I'm thinking I need to create the SATA RAID Driver disk and have another crack, as your saying. I feel like such a Noob, but any idea on the proceedure for install on my Motherboard, In an ideal world I'd just have one driver on the floppy and follow the on screen prompts, right? :D

Was just the fact XP install does see the drive when it manages to get that far thats throwing me off. Will have to leave it tonight as I havent got any Floppys around here..Doh!
Thanks for the continued help! :)
 
The plot thickens....

I created the driver disk and got it loaded during windows setup, only to have the computer seemingly hang on me once again. The really strange thing is once I had disconnected the IDE drive and connected the SATA.... Start up, POST tests, XP setup, everything grinds to a hault and for some unknown reason the HDD activity light is on constantly... As soon as I gave up and reconnected this old old IDE drive (which is about 10years old!!!) everything speeds up again. :confused:

Surely somethings not right... Dogdy HDD? or worse yet Mainboard?
 
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