Serial ATA Drive Problems?

[JonathanF]

My Computer has an ASUS P4PE Motherboard that is running Windows XP Pro on a WDC 120 GB IDE Disk Drive.

I just purchased a WDC 250 GB Serial ATA Disk Drive, and even though the Computer's BIOS recognizes the Disk Drive, my Windows XP System cannot recognize the Disk Drive.

In my Computer's Windows Device Manager and under the SCSI and RAID Controllers the WinXP Promise FastTrak 376 Controller is listed.

How I can get my existing Windows XP Pro to recognize the WDC 250 GB Serial ATA Disk Drive?

After that, can I boot up my Computer in the DOS mode to use a Ghost Floppy to Ghost my existing WDC 120 GB IDE Disk Drive's "C" Partition to my new WDC 250 GB Serial ATA Disk Drive's "C" Partition.

Jonathan


Jonathan

 

[pat]

It might recongnize the controller, but maybe you did not install the driver for. U should have a 3 1/2"disk with the driver with your motherboard. If drivers are installed, in settings-administrative tools-computer management-disks management, you will see your new drive that is not actived/partitionned/formatted...from there, have your disk ready. It might not be the correct terms I used for the path to get to the disk tools, I'm not at my machine right now, but you should be able to ffind your way.

As for moving your partition, I wouldn't bet on that. Better back-up your data and reinstall windows. A best way to do that is to create, let say, 240 gigs as the first partition on you new disk and a 10 gigs at the end. This you pout all your stuffs you want to keep in the last 10 gigs one, and after, you can install Windows on the first one. This is only exemple, partition your HD like you already want it with Windows to suit your storage needs.You might want to have 2 or 3 partitions on your disk, but just keep the first one for windows. and dont format it yet. This way, windows will gives it the letter "c" if you reinstall it over that first partition. Once windows is installed and running, the first thing to do before installing new drivers and programs is to change the disk letters to you need. You see, if you already have 3 partition in your system + 1 cdrw, then your current setup should be c: for windows, d: for the next partition and d: for the last one and e: for the cdrw. you install your new drive, create 3 partition and activate only the last 2 one and formatted them, you will end up with f: for the first partition on the second disk and g: for the third one. If you install windows on the very first partition, which will be c:, which is what it should be. Some softwares or drivers needs to have windows on c: in order to work good. then after you might change the letters for the hard disk. you might have to change your CDRW letter if it use one that you need for your HD, because windows wont let you have two times the same letter. And once you are satified with your setup, you can start installing drivers and software. You might have problem to boot if you install your old HD with windows still installed, so once you backed up all your data and you're sure that your new windows installation works good, remove you new drive, put back the old one, and boot from windows install cd to format your old windows installation. cancel the installation after formatting, put your new drive back and boot. If everithing went good, you should have your new disk and your old one running with all your data on it.

I did that quite often and havent had any problems

-Always put the blame on you first, then on the hardware !!!

 

[xeenrecoil]

heya jonathan;

you may want to ask some other questions like for instance.

What is the largest drive/partition XP Pro will natively address/support?
You may have to partition the drive in order for XP Pro to be able to address/support it.

Do you have the latest drivers for your SATA controller installed?
If you dont, and the current drivers dont support drives larger then say 200GB then it wont recognize the drive.

There are probably other issues that i didnt cover but these should get you started.

XeeN