Anything special need to be done for SATA drive?

[madcatmk2123]

Hi, I have an external SATA drive I put together myself and recently I now have a internal SATA drive running as well. My last XP Home install I had about 2 weeks ago, I installed it on the internal SATA drive which was no problem. Then about 5 days ago I turned on my external SATA when XP Home was fully running and I was signed in to get it ready for the reboot to make the drive appear in My Computer.

When I did that, an XP pop up shows saying it discovered new hardware and starts to install software for the hardrive and I get a message saying new hardware was installed and a reboot was required. I rebooted, and on the reboot it gave me a disk boot failure message. I restarted again and it was fine, but then a few days later I get a volume failure and disk boot errors. I later found that the power plug to the internal kept coming loose so I think that probably attributed to the disk boot failure and maybe the volume corruption as well.

At any rate, I dont want anything to go wrong with this current install, so when I want to use the external SATA drive, should I only turn it on when the computer is off or in the middle shutting down/rebooting? Is there any BIOS setting I should check and set to stop a problem from coming up? Thanks.

 

[Tedster]

you need DRIVERS for SATA. Normally done when installing windows.

 

[zipperman]

Haveing 2 Sata drives

It seems you had no problems installing your first as Sata 1 and the OS.
That should be the hard part.It was for me.I have to think that the system
is ready to just attach a second to the motherboard as Sata2 connection
according to my manual.The Raid drivers from the first should cover this,but i'm not sure.
But haveing loose connections is not a good thing.This must be fixed before
booting with it connected.During bootup it should describe what Sata drives it detects.Watch the screen closely,it's the first to appear.the Pause key will give you more time to read it.
What OS is it.My manual has a warning for useing two,
Raid 0 and Raid 1.
read yours ,it's a must have
I must add that this is about 2 Internal drives.

 

[madcatmk2123]

I believe I installed the drivers from the motherboard cd with the chipset driver installation option, but that was after windows was already installed on the internal SATA. Other then that, from reading the manual (also states that my MB supports up to 6 SATA HDs) my motherboard has a "On-chip Serial ATA" function that is disabled I think as its the default and I havent messed with it. There is a "Serial ATA port 0/1 mode", but the default is Primary master and I have no IDE's hooked up which I think this mode pertains to. Any other suggestions for me to look into before I start up the external SATA later this week?

 

[nickc]

try to just start it after windows is running and see how this goes.

 

[zipperman]

Just 1 comment and kind of a guess since i'm not familiar with external
hard drives.Is it a usb connection ? Is it usb2 ? If so this could be the reason.
usb2 devices are impossible without usb2 installed.
I read recently,to check usb 2.Go to SYSDM/Hardware/Device Manager
Universal Serial Bus controllers.
USB Enhanced indicates USB2.
Glad to hear you have a mbd manual.I was quoteing from my asus .

 

[madcatmk2123]

Nah, the external is a IDE converted to SATA and connected by SATA cable to the computer. Though, do you think I'd probably be better off replacing the SATA conversion for a USB 2.0 conversion connection? Ive tried using Knoppix a few times to back up stuff to it when the HD failed, but it has write persmissions being NTFS and from the looks of it a USB HD doesnt have this problem whether it is NTFS or not, at least from what I have read. Not to mention USB is hot swappable and easily changed from computer to computer, which this SATA connection isnt.

 

[nickc]

no it is not, a USB 1 or 2 controller can be bought any way needed. and I have USB controller and have never had this problem. it just works.........