Windows xp setup not finding new hard drive. Please help

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Hi

I purchased a new hard drive as my old one broke. I have plugged it in correctly (checked this with seagate diagnostic tools which recognise the hard drive is plugged in and allowed me to do a quick scan to check it was ok.) When I run windows xp installer it cannot find a hard drive. Please help. The following is the harddrive information and processor:

The new hard drive is:
Seagate ST3500630AS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 16MB Cache 7200RPM - OEM

I am using the following processor I bought 3 years ago:
AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64bit 3400+ 512kb L2cache 754pin Retail Boxed Processor with 3 Year Warranty and Fan Included

Since buying the processor I seem to have lost the setup disk that came with.

Thanks

James
 
More than likely if your bios recognizes the drive and XP does not you will need a driver which can be loaded from floppy or CD when XP setup first starts you will see a prompt at the bottom of the screen something like "Press F6 to load 3rd party drivers"
 
Another option 'may be' to configure your bios to set that SataII as an IDE drive; a lot depends on what your bios has available and YOU have the motherboard data.


:)
 
james_conway said:
Hi

I purchased a new hard drive as my old one broke. I have plugged it in correctly (checked this with seagate diagnostic tools which recognise the hard drive is plugged in and allowed me to do a quick scan to check it was ok.) When I run windows xp installer it cannot find a hard drive. Please help. The following is the harddrive information and processor:

The new hard drive is:
Seagate ST3500630AS 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 16MB Cache 7200RPM - OEM

...

There's your problem!! SATAII HDD!! Check with the MoBo manaufacturer and download the latest BIOS and re-flash. Then check your BIOS settings and make sure it's set for SATAII.
 
The SATA/RAID driver you probably need is supplied with your motherboard, either directly on floppies or on the CD that came with the mobo or both. Your mobo manual should give you instructions on what to copy to floppies from the CD. You can also go the motherboard manufacturer's website to download the appropriate drivers.
 
Thanks for your responses. Quite a novice with this.

I found a disk which came with the motherboard which said SATA AND RAID drivers. I put this in and selected F6 on setup of windows but this didnt solve the problem.

I could find no option to change to SATA II so I assume that means my bios is out of date. Had a look on the AMD website but not really sure what to download. Please could someone help.

Thanks again for all your responses so far
 
Ok.....

The Seagates (to the best of my knowledge) come jumpered to SATA 1 (150Gbs) As mentioned earlier some boards BIOS offer the option to run SATA as IDE, this is the fast cheap and dirty way of getting up and running. New Intel boards switch to this mode automatically when they only sense ONE SATA HDD. Intel claims the a single SATA drive cannot be configured to run as SATA (the mode is called "AHCI") with XP. Their boards will only run a single SATA (without the RAID driver) with Vista.
 
'Quite a novice with this.'

Advice to you then: BEFORE you ask for help at a forum read the introduction guidelines so that you know how to post, what information to provide, and how to be a help to yourself and everyone else.

You didn't, so the help is limited.

:(
 
james_conway said:
...

I could find no option to change to SATA II so I assume that means my bios is out of date. Had a look on the AMD website but not really sure what to download. Please could someone help.

Thanks again for all your responses so far

I should qualify what I meant in my advice. You are using SATA II, which is first, not IDE, second is not SATA. But that does not mean the BIOS distinguishes between SATA and SATA II. What I meant was, if SATA II came out after you purchased your comp, that would explain why you're having problems getting it to work. You may have to download and reflash your BIOS and maybe install a new driver.

As for how to do this, the manufacturers web site should outline how to reflash your BIOS.
 
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