Booting from SATA on a GA-K8NF-9.

[archmnementh]

I cannot seem to Boot from my SATA HDD I am running the GA-K8NF-9 MoBo and I cannot get my computer to Boot From SATA, it is the only HDD I have in there (Western Digital Caviar 80gb) And I am using a TinyBuild of Windows XP for install, could this be a problem? I tried other versions but I would prefer to use this particular build of XP (For Speed)

OR should I just more or less say "Fuck it all to hell" and keep my Old IDE HDD's (Seagate Barracuda's 2x 60gig ea) Knowing that this would leave me with a useless box and a 1990 era Quantum Fireball HDD that I have yet to get to work. (These two particular harddrives oddly enough are inseperable, I have tried countless times to get ANY computer to work with one, and it doesn't plug the second one in on the same IDE cable and boom the bastard runs perfectly.)

Note this is my first experience with SATA and the whole slew of New Motherboard technology out there, and frankly right now I prefer the old shit over this crap.

 

[nafhan]

It's likely not a problem with the hard drive or the motherboard. It's Windows. Windows does not come with SATA drivers. I had this problem when I first installed XP with a SATA hard drive. The MB should have come with a SATA driver floppy disk. You'll need to do something like this:
Right when the install first begins, there should be an option to use SCSI drivers or something like that. You will need to select that option, insert your floppy driver disk, and choose the correct drivers. You should be able to proceed with the install as usual at that point. Good luck!

 

[pat]

In BIOS, the SATA connector as set as RAID. Disable RAID. You don't need any other drivers, unless you plan on RAID, which is NOT the case with your case.

 

[pat]

It's likely not a problem with the hard drive or the motherboard. It's Windows. Windows does not come with SATA drivers. I had this problem when I first installed XP with a SATA hard drive. The MB should have come with a SATA driver floppy disk. You'll need to do something like this:
Right when the install first begins, there should be an option to use SCSI drivers or something like that. You will need to select that option, insert your floppy driver disk, and choose the correct drivers. You should be able to proceed with the install as usual at that point. Good luck!

Why do everybody answer to install drivers on nforce4 when they are noyt needed???

 

[nafhan]

The driver thing worked for me...

 

[Pepicek]

I got the same mobo (used) from an ebay seller, so I had to look for user manuals. I found the info here: http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_sata_raid_os_nforce3_e.pdf

very useful.

you will note that this is a separate manual from the general mobo manual.

I built my current computer with this mobo, two 40G SATA drives mirrored in RAID, and added a 120G IDE for data and extended storage. Because the two SATAs are acting as drive C, they run hot. (Seagates). I dont know if thats because of SATA, RAID, or just the brand and model drive.

gl

-Joe

 

[pat]

The driver thing worked for me...

Because you probably has RAID enabled in BIOS and using one drive.

So, yes drivers will work. My point is, if RAID is disabled (and it should be because running one HDD or 2 in single mode is NOT RAID), then Windows will install on the SATA drive just like any other drive. I setted up about 10 system with nforce3 and 4 chipset on SATA hdd and I never had to load anything for the install. I simply make sure that RAID was disabled in BIOS for the CONNECTOR (yes, on SATA, each connector can be set as RAID or not) the HDD was put on.

 

[nafhan]

Well, that's good to know. Thanks for the tip!

 

[archmnementh]

Well Thanks for the help on that one, I got it fixed, but there is another problem that I have yet to figure out. I get write errors periodically on my SATA HDD, just random moments where the drive is unable to write info, rather annoying especially since my Windows install is on it and it happened with writing reg files, and Azureus. But nothing else (I copied over 10gigs of info from other drives to this one just to make sure...and it didn't skip a beat.) I was wondering perhaps could that be a windows internal problem?

 

[linux_0]

You should run a surface scan for bad sectors.

Good Luck