SATA drive not recognized

[salemdave]

Hi, I'm building my first computer so be gentle.

After reading about them I decided to use SATA drives. Bought two WD 120 GB drives, no IDE drives. Using Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard w/ built-in SATA support.

Put everything together, it all works fine except no hard drives found in BIOS. BIOS seems to be looking only for IDE drives, and I can't figure out how to get it to look for SATA. Do I need an IDE drive too?

I bought SATA drives in OEM version (stupid me) so didn't get any utilities or instructions. What do I need and where do I get it? I went to WD site but not sure what to get.

Thanks in advance, all help welcomed.

--SalemDave

 

[raretech]

Hey,

On my system, you enable SATA support in the BIOS and there is nothing about the drives themself in there. During boot up, after the ram count screen, a screen will flash quickly about the SATA controller, and will show the drives attached with a message to enter it's own little config routine. That's how it works on my system anyway...

What OS are you trying to install on them, or have you already gotten that done and you were just looking for general info?

<i>The wrath of penguins shall be felt. No windows shall be left unbroken.</i>

 

[salemdave]

Whoa, I missed that. I went back through the BIOS and there was an opportunity to make a RAID volume. So I made a RAID 0 volume. At least this verifies that the drives are installed and working. So now, I think, I have one big virtual drive.

I was planning to install XP on the drives and hoped to make them (it?) my main boot disk. But I can't install XP, because when I boot from the XP CD-ROM, the Windows installer can't see the drives.

I am wondering if I need some special utility from Western Digital or something to prepare the drives. Or should I just give up and go buy an IDE drive to boot from?

--SalemDave

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by salemdave on 12/15/03 12:37 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Vapor]

During the Windows install, at the beginning, it will ask you to press F6 for RAID and/or SCSI driver installation. Do that, but make sure you have the WD floppy drive of drivers, because that's what you will be installing.

Damn Rambus.

 

[salemdave]

OK, thanks. I went out to the WD site, got the driver files, created the floppy, and pressed F6 during Windows startup. Seemed to work fine. Windows saw the drive, and told me that I had to format the partition. So I did. This took a very long time. Now Windows says it has installed XP on that partition. It calls it Drive C. Hooray.

But - I can't find any way to get the computer to boot from that drive. In the BIOS routine to set the boot device, I get lots of choices, but none of them are a SATA drive or Drive C. I've tried HDD 0, 1, etc.

When I try to boot the computer, I get an error "failed to load operating system" and it stops there unless I boot from CD-ROM.

Any ideas? You all have been great so far!

--SalemDave

 

[sjonnie]

Did you try SCSI?

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[silverpig]

The correct setting is HD0. That's what I have for my SATA drive and it boots properly.

Some day I'll be rich and famous for inventing a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.

 

[salemdave]

Well, no, it's not a SCSI drive, so that didn't occur to me. Being a newbie and all. But hey, I'll try it, can't make it any worse.

--SalemDave

 

[salemdave]

OK, I tried SCSI and tried HDD 0 again. "Error loading operating system".

Thanks for trying. Any other ideas?

--SalemDave

 

[sjonnie]

Oh duh, you made a RAID? So it's attached to the RAID controller? How about if you try...RAID? Or did you do that already?

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[salemdave]

Well, booting from RAID is not one of the options given in the BIOS. If it were there, I'd be happy to try it. Like I said, I'll try anything. Thanks for the suggestion...

--SalemDave