SATA hard disk not detected ?

[Tigger]

I have recently purchased & installed a new hard disk in my Dads computer.

It's a Seagate 300gb SATA drive.

When I put the computer on, with SATA enabled in BIOS etc as normal, no hard drives are being detected
Only the CD RW drive is detected as a primary master.

Just before the computer boots from CDROM (Windows disc) - the hard drive volume is detected and windows proceeds to install.
A progress bar is shown on the screen. When the status reaches 100% the computer comes to a halt on a black screen.

Any ideas?
T

 

[DrR]

Is this a fresh install of windows??

 

[Tigger]

yeah - nothing on the drive as it is

 

[Chrisjk]

check the jumpers on the back of the hard drive, make sure its set to master

 

[DrR]

Well when i did it, as SATA is newer than windows xp so windows can't detect it,
You need to put the drivers for the SATA disk onto a floppy, then when booting from the windows cd it ask something like "press f6 if you want to install raid drivers" or something like that, hit F6 then install whats on the floppy.

 

[Storm_Force]

Yep what Rollo says

 

[DrR]

Only took me and a mate 13 hours to find that out, seriously

 

[Chrisjk]

My xp detected it fine 1st time, the only issue i had was Gigabyte mobos are set to RAID by default so had to change that to sata.

 

[hooligan]

goto control panel
admistrator tools
computers management
storage then disk management
then add a sata drive

using vista btw ^^

 

[DrR]

^^^ hard to do that when doing a fresh install onto a SATA drive

 

[Chrisjk]

Rollo, what you said about installing separate sata drivers, why out of interest didn't i need them? Could it be a more recent biosi have or perhaps using xp profesional?

 

[Tigger]

There are no jumpers on the drive - already looked at that.
I havent had a floppy disk in a computer for at least 4 years

It's Vista Ultimate I'm trying to install - run like a dream on the previous IDE hard drive in the same computer - very confusing!

 

[Storm_Force]

Must be a motherboard setting, I build my new pc a few weeks ago and done fresh install using sata drive with no problems. I think I am right in saying sata drives do not have master / slave jumpers.

 

[Karl3158]

Some SATA drivers are included in the chipset drivers. My intel motherboard didn't require any drivers either.

Check the boot order, some BIOS's use a legacy boot system, there may be some crafty settings you need to tweek

 

[Karl3158]

Strom, you are correct SATA has no jumper settings.

 

[Tigger]

Nah they don't have those jumpers - checked the other 2 SATA drives in my own computer. Some have a jumper block for data speed (150 or 300)

 

[Adam]

SATA drives dont use dirvers like IDE.

Check you have it plugged into the first SATA port on the motherboard should be something like SATAII0 on the Gigabyte board. ( if it is Gigabyte)

 

[Karl3158]

You do however need the drivers for the SATA controller...

 

[Adam]

I never needed to have the SATA divers on a floppy for the last two machines I built

 

[Karl3158]

Some do and some don't, I have found that nForce based chipsets normally do. I'd give it a go without first. When I did my XP machine I used a disk image of an IDE drive onto the new SATA drive, tried booting Windows, and all was good. My pc is however donkeys years old now, I'm guessing Service Packs etc have updated the drivers etc for my aging chipset..

 

[Marky_]

I think I am right in saying sata drives do not have master / slave jumpers.

That's right.

Have you formatted the drive before trying to do anything else with it?

 

[Mark5290]

I am pretty sure that when i first installed an sata drive on my now old Abit NF7-S V2.0, i had to F6 and install drivers from a floppy for the HDD when installing XP, i am pretty sure the HDD was picked up in the boot post screen but did not appear in the bios screen, the XP installation did not recognize the HDD untill i F6'd and installed the drivers, then the XP installation progressed without any problems.

After i had updated the bios to later revisions, it was no longer necessary to F6 and install drivers from a floppy as the XP installation went through straight away, reading the release notes for the bios update revision, there was something in there about updating the sata controller chip onboard.

The only other sata problem i have come across is one i installed on my brothers pc with an Abit board, the installation went fine, bios reported correct drive and size, but after windows had finished installing and it was up and running it was only reporting 137gb, the drive fitted was a 160gb.

It seemed to be quite common for larger HDD's of lets say 160gb to be only recognised as 137gb, but i did not think it would happen with the HDD and board combo i was using, a bios flash may have sorted it out but i did not try it, all that needed doing was going into disk management in windows, then expanding the windows partition which was being reported as 137gb into the remaining unpartioned space, job done, the full usuable space of the HDD was now recognised.

 

[DrR]

When i installed it on a SATA they where brand spanking new, and was an old version of windows, this was 2+ years ago so can't really answer anything else.

 

[Tigger]

The hard drive is picked up without any problems on my own computer so I'm guessing it's down to the BIOS needing an update.

How can I do this?

 

[Mark5290]

There are 2 ways to flash the bios, the first is using a windows based bios flash program that comes on your motherboard driver disc, the second is by downloading the bios update file from your motherboard manufacturer, putting the file with basic boot instructions and an installer utillity such as Aflash on a floppy disc and then re-boot and install the file from the floppy.

 

[Snubbs]

Try formatting it in your PC, thats what i had to do with my current build.