Windows XP Instlall: not detecting SATA drive

Post by **KingManULTRA** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:06 pm

Motherboard: GA-K8U
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST380811AS 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Windows XP pro installation will not detect this SATA drive on installation, and for some reason the mobo has problems detecting it too.

Ideas?

Post by **zolborg** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 5:05 pm

It has nothing to do with Windows. The motherboard is the issue. When you are starting the install, wait until you see the Press F6..then press it and insert the appropriate floppy disk for the sata drivers. Should have come with the motherboard.

Post by **AmIdYfReAk** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:44 pm

check the drive to make sure its in SATA1 mode,

i also had a simular issue with one of my drives i would put it to SATA1 and my Mobo would read it, load up the drivers start the windows install then it would Not detect it anymore.

it was rather annoying.

also, see if within the Bios there is an option for the SATA controller to act as an ATA controller..

the name of this setting Escapes me but they usually have it.

Post by **KingManULTRA** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:57 am

Well, fuck...I don't have a floppy drive or a floppy disk.

By the way, I tried connecting my IDE drive with XP and my SATA drive at the same time. The installed Windows XP on the IDE drive starts up as per usual, and the SATA drive appears in the device manager. However, it doesn't appear under 'My Computer'. What gives?

EDIT: Ok, the Local Disk Manager Service wasn't running and I had to assign a label to the disk and format it. Hopefully it will work now.

But how can I use my current XP installation to install another copy of XP on my 2nd hard drive?

Post by **Kills On Site** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:49 am

Yea once you find the drive in disk management and format it then you can see and use it.

You could try and find something that was SATA happy that could do a mirror copy of a HDD. What mobo do you have?

Post by **dzjepp** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:59 am

you should disable sata functionality in the mobo before installing the os (not applicable to vista) that way you won't have any problems during the install. once that is done and you install your chipset/sata drivers you should go back to the mobo and turn sata back on.

Post by **zolborg** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:48 am

KingManULTRA wrote:Well, fuck...I don't have a floppy drive or a floppy disk.

By the way, I tried connecting my IDE drive with XP and my SATA drive at the same time. The installed Windows XP on the IDE drive starts up as per usual, and the SATA drive appears in the device manager. However, it doesn't appear under 'My Computer'. What gives?

EDIT: Ok, the Local Disk Manager Service wasn't running and I had to assign a label to the disk and format it. Hopefully it will work now.

But how can I use my current XP installation to install another copy of XP on my 2nd hard drive?

The fact that it is [the sata drive] recognized by Windows when you boot off of another drive, means just that. Windows is seeing it as a drive. This has nothing to do with being able to boot off of it and install Windows on it from scratch.

Post by **KingManULTRA** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:38 pm

Well, no matter what I tried Windows XP would not find the Sata drive on installation. It finds it only with new SATA drivers provided in SP1 and SP2 on my existing IDE XP install, but my XP disk does not have either SP (SATA was not around yet when XP was released). I didn't have a floppy disk so I couldn't install the drivers during XP installation manually.

BUT

Kills On Site wrote: You could try and find something that was SATA happy that could do a mirror copy of a HDD. What mobo do you have?

Yeah, I connected both drives at the same time and used this program called Acronis True Image Workstation to clone my entire hard drive from the IDE drive to the empty SATA drive.

It worked. I now have to identical HDDs with the same content. My SATA drive now works by itself just fine and has all the stuff on my old HDD on it. No reinstallation of XP or my other program was necessary.

Post by **Foo** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:28 pm

if you don't have a floppy drive to install your SATA drivers, the next option is to add the drivers onto an XP CD using a utility like nLite.

There are 2 kinds of drivers for hard drive controllers, PnP (the kind windows uses when you're looking at My Computer) and TXT-Mode (the kind windows setup uses).

The XP CD includes Text-Mode drivers for many drive controllers, but not all, and newer controllers are less likely to have a driver available on the XP CD (obviously).

So yeah.... you've got XP working again so that's good, but I'd advise preparing a new XP CD with the drive controller drivers built in, to avoid any hassle in the future. Add SP2 etc on while you're at it for bonus points.