Re: SATA problem

From: Bob Harris (rharris270[SPAM)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 09:42:45 -0500

For starts, the ability to "see" a SATA hard drive is a function of the BIOS
and SATA controller on the motherboard, not a function of the hard drive
itself (assuming that the hard drive is not mechanically defective.) So,
rather than looking for solutions from Maxtox, look at your motherboard's
manual, or user support for the motherboard.

But, in general several things need to happen before the drive will appear
in Windows:

1a. If the SATA controller is also a RAID controller, you need ot "build" a
RAID "array". On my ASUS P4S8X motherboard, this option appears midway
through the BIOS checks. I says something like "Press CTRL-F to enter
FastBuild (tm) Utility". This utility sets up the RAID array(s) for the
Promise FastTrack controller, whihc is the RAID/SATA controller.

1b. Since you already have some disks, and operating system, etc installed,
be very careful >>NOT<< to make a mirror or a striped array involving any of
those existing disks! If you make arrays using the old disks, it will be
like formating them, and you will lose all data.

1c. Instead, use the advanced or custom options to define an "array"
containing only the one SATA disk.

2. Once the RAID array has been created, the SATA disk should appear in the
BIOS checks. For example, mine appears just after a couple of lines stating
the BIOS version of the RAID controller (distinct from the main BIOS version
itself, whihc is stated much earlier in the POST sequence). On my PC it
looks like:

ID Mode Size Tracking-Map Status
1 1+0 stripe 120034M 14593/255/63 Functional

3. At this point the PC (BIOS) knows about the disk, but windows does not.
You now need to partition and format the disk. This can be done either from
the disk management console within XP, or with the MaxBlast utilities that
should ahve come with the disk, or which you can download from Maxtor. If
you choose to use XP to partiton, the trick is to "initialize" the disk,
meaning create partitions, before you try to format it.

4. Either way, once you have partitions, they should be shown in XP's disk
management console. If they have a format (like NTFS or FAT32) that should
appear. If they have no format yet, they will be called "RAW".

5. However, the disk may still not appear in windows explorer. If that is
the problem, use the disk management console to assign a drive letter to
each new partition you have created. Reboot, and then explorer should see
the partition(s).

"Bobby" <bobby@europe.com> wrote in message
news:38dohvF5kgfh0U1@individual.net...
>I am trying to install a new SATA hard drive into my system.
>
> It's a Maxtor 250Gb, SATA drive. Model 6B25OSO.
>
> I currently have a Maxtor 120Gb, PATA drive (as my master boot drive)
> along with three other IDE drives (two CD/DVD and an LS120 drive).
>
> My system does not appear to recognise my new drive.
>
> My mobo is an Asus K8V SE model which has PATA, SATA and SATA RAID
> support. I have connected my new drive to the SATA 1 connection.
>
> The drive is receiving power since it is warm and I felt the rotation of
> the drive.
>
> However, my BIOS is not reporting the drive - only the existing PATA drive
> and the three other IDE devices.
>
> I've checked the SATA cable connections. They look fine - and they're
> keyed so I guess they're OK.
>
> I had disabled the "OnChip SATA BOOTROM" in the BIOS and once I had
> enabled this I (briefly) saw something about my new HD flash on the screen
> during one of the boot screens (I think my model number appeared). But I
> can't stop these damn screens to confirm this (who designs these things?).
>
> Since the BIOS doesn't appear to recognise my new drive, Windows doesn't
> either and I can't install it.
>
> Does anyone have any idea what I can do?
>
> Cheers.
>
> Bobby
>

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