Re: SATA problem

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

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

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 09:45:51 -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).

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