Why SATA! WHY!!!

[billysweird]

Ok, So...heres the deal. Bought all my new parts today put everything together as i should. Turn on the PC Runs perfectly 'UNTIL!' it comes to installing windows. Says unable to detect my drives (strange).

So i go into my Serial ATA config in my BIOS...Everything seems to be in check Raid is switched off...SATA control enable yup. So i think to myself Maybe on this strange insodent my Harddrives might need Pin config even though it clearly states on the top of the Harddrive quote "Sata Harddrives do not need PIN configuration" and gives me no details how to set master and slave on these drives (western digital 16mg Cache 500gig) so i do nothing. Then i figure well it has to be one of the hard drives. So i test each harddrive seperatly on 3 differant ports. And still to no Avail.


So whats the deal? something i have missed or what?

*edit*
btw...my motherboard is an ASUS p5n32-e SLI (775 slot XD)

 

[Nodsu]

Apparently you have "missed" the Windows XP installation issue that pretty much every other person on the planet has.

In short, you either need to give Windows the SATA controller drivers on a floppy (the "press F6" prompt in the beginning of the install) or set your SATA controller to IDE emulation mode in the BIOS.

I'm pretty sure this is described in your motherboard manual too!

 

[rmdl51]

You stated that you just got everything brand new right? so it's either the SATA drivers issue or that you have to Prepare with New Partitions your HDD, However I always avoid this problem as Nodsu said, Emulating SATA to IDE.

 

[billysweird]

See both of those owuld be fine, if my Bios was reconizing the HDD's in my 'BIOS' but its not its saying theres nothing. So yeh sorry i didn't mention that before.

 

[rmdl51]

Then my friend you got a DOA HDD! but first try it on a different PC if you can!

 

[billysweird]

i did that and both of them worked in my GF's pc. So im guessing Faulty SATA ports. On the Mobo i looked it up and apparently this mobo has an issue with not detecting sata harddrives on the POST and CMOS so i might have ti wait 3 months for them to repair it YAY!.

 

[billysweird]

Quote from the Troubleshooting:
The SATA ports on my motherboard behave quite strange lately. SATA devices connected to it may show one or more of the following symptoms from time to time:

- SATA devices not detected at POST stage or inside CMOS setup screen.

- SATA HDD cannot complete the installation of operating system after enabling AHCI or RAID function.

- Computer takes forever to install operating system or copying files.

- Operating system may hang while large disk access operations are under progress.


Is there anything I can try before sending it out for repair?

 

[Nodsu]

Maybe you are connecting the drives to RAID ports?

 

[Fragrant Coit]

Try setting the HDD at 150 instead of 300 and see if the BIOS picks it up then.

You don't say what brand, but it's pins 5 & 6 in WD's.

Browse the manufacturers website for jumper settings.

Install with only 1 HDD attached, then add the others.

Early SATA Controllers don't pick up SATA2 HDD's , so the drive needs to be "slowed" to 150mbs and then it picks them up. Though i've never struck it on an NVidia chipset before (normally Via & SiS)

 

[nickc]

on my ASUS p5n-e SLI MB all I had to do to get the SATA hard drives recognized was set Emulating SATA to IDE, and my hard drives have all been recognized since.

 

[Tedster]

you must install your SATA drivers when installing windows. Press F6 when prompted and insert your floppy. You DO have a floppy right? All good computer users still have them for this low level type task.

 

[Ph30nIX]

I never had to install the drivers for my SATA disc, however it is an older one so it may be a different case.

 

[sghiznaneck]

Do you hae the install disk for your motherboard? Many motherboards include a driver on their disks for SATA hdd's. Although some do require you to load them via floppy disk, I have found that the newer ones have them included on the disk and can be installed just like any other software.

 

[sallyduk]

Don't know if this helps but I reecently installed an additional 2 500GB SATA2 HDDs making a total of 4 HDDs in my Dell system.

The motherboard has 4 SATA2 ports but discovered that the motherboard controller only controls 2 of the SATA ports & the other 2 have to be configured in the BIOS as ATA mode, which I understand is an emulation work around.

Once I selected ATA emulation mode ensuring the OS HDD was conected to one of the SATA ports controlled by the controller then the 2 new SATA drives were recognised & XP booted up as normal. On my Bios (A01) it warned that changing from combination mode (the mode prior to installing the 2 new drives) could cause Windows not to boot & it maybe neccessary to re-install XP - I still went for it & thankfully all was OK. Manual installation of drivers wasn't neccessary, just had to initialise & format the HDDs in XP

Hope this helps, if not, just drop it into the bin!