Installing a SINGLE SATA drive

merrick97

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Jul 22, 2005
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recently bought a Western Digital 250 gig SATAII hard drive and a new motherboard ,the Gigabyte Ga-K8N-Ultra-SLI. Anyway, I want to know how to install a single SATA drive in the SATAII port (Im not using the Silicon Image controller). I know how to physically install it, but IM clueless as to what to my BIOS options should be and when I enter the RAID configuration, my only options are for how to set up the drive in a RAID array. I dont want to set the drive up in a RAID array. I want to set up the drive as a single hard drive and install Windows XP on it. I do have the necessary disk so that when I enter F6, I can install those drivers. Even when I do use the F6 option, windows setup still does not recognize the Hard drive, but yet it is recognozed when I enter into the RAID configuration utility at start up.

Does anyone have any ideas? the gigabyte manual is NO help. Im sure Im missing something obvious, but any help would be greatly appreciated
 

dmroeder

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Jan 15, 2005
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You don't need to worry about RAID. The only thing you need to know for what you are doing is to disable it. RAID takes multiple disks and makes one out of them. Pressing F6 during the windows install is for installing RAID drivers, which you won't be doing. You just need to make sure that the port you are using is enabled in the BIOS and then install windows like you normally would.
 
In fact, you should disable RAID in the BIOS.

DM: F6 for RAID is only when you are not using RAID that is integrated into the chipset. If it is the nVidia RAID, then the drivers are a part of the mobo/chipset drivers.

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pat

Expert
DM: F6 for RAID is only when you are not using RAID that is integrated into the chipset. If it is the nVidia RAID, then the drivers are a part of the mobo/chipset drivers.

No. you need drivers even for nvidia RAID. You DONT need drivers when the controller is not set to operate as a RAID controller. nvidia controller support PATA and SATA natively, so no drivers are required for install

You NEED drivers for both SATA mode and RAID mode if you have an onboard controller, as the Sil one.. This one is just like another device on the PCI bus and need drivers in order to have windows working with.

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pat

Expert
Your Gigabyte manual has what you need to know. You simply dont understand what SATA is and what RAID is. First, you dont want RAID.. then set the BIOS as such. Set the nvidia ports as normal or base(in fact, anything but RAID..) then your drive will be like any IDE drive, because it is an IDE drive.. only it has an SATA interface instead of an PATA one..

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Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Basically you just have to figure out how to disable RAID mode for the SATA controller. It's a BIOS setting. Once RAID is disabled you won't even need the floppy or the F6 prompt.

With RAID mode disabled the drive should appear in motherboard BIOS.

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