SATA Motherbord Not recognizing SATA HDD

[Fat Man Stan]

• Motherboard - Sockets 478 Elite Group # PT800CE-A
  
  • FSB 800
  • DDR 400
  • Serial ATA
  • ATA133
  • RAID0, RAID1 support
  • USB 2.0
• Ram - 2x256mb DDR PC 2700
• Processor - 2.4 Intel P4 533MHz
• Power Supply - 300w P4 ready
• Hard Drive - Maxtor 100gig Sata drive

I have put the components together and everything else works correctly. I start up the computer and it says it is checking the IDE Primary Master and Slave even though I do not have anything plugged into the IDE Primary or the Slave. I have a Maxtor 100 gig Sata drive that is plugged into the SATA1 plug and started the computer up. During the start up it does not see the hard drive. If I hook up a IDE hard drive it will recognize the IDE drive with no problem.
Could you help me?

Thanks

[Jarhed7276]

Hi Fat Man Stan, welcome to TechIMO.

Have you installed the SATA drivers? Or are you saying that the drive is not recognized in your BIOS?

[stroyal]

Did you press F8 at the very beginning of XP setup, so setup would ask for the SATA drivers lated in setup?

[carl33p]

If the SATA HD isnt being recognized, maybe a bad Sata connection. Try another sata port on the mobo, and maybe a different sata cable.

[Fat Man Stan]

I tried the F6 to install the RAID party or what ever it is and it still did not see the HDD. I did not know about the F8 to install drivers. Do i do that when i am installing the os?

I have an identical system i am building with the same mobo, ram, processor, but a 400w p.s., 100 gig SATA Maxtor drive and have got the same response. I also tried plugging it into both SATA connections and nothing on either of them.

When it tells me it is searching for my Components it says IDE Primary Master and Slave, should it say SATA Primary Master and Slave?

[Jarhed7276]

Is the drive recognise in your BIOS? If it is then you may need to enable SATA in your BIOS settings. After this is done when installing your OS, when it first starts to install it will ask you if you want to install SCSI or third party drivers and to press F8 if you do. Press F8 then a minute or two later it will ask you to insert the floppy disk with the SATA drivers on it. Insert the disk and it will install the drivers for you and finish the OS installation.

[Fat Man Stan]

It does not say anything in the BIOS about SATA and i have no floppy or floppy drive.

[Jarhed7276]

When you first boot up the BIOS does a memory test then detects the hard drives and optical drives. Is you hard drive detected at this point?

No floppy makes it a bit tougher. As I see it you have two options.

1. There is a way to slipstream the drivers on to a CD. You will need to be able to burn a CD, have a copy of XP, and be able to alter the instructions for your particular SATA driver (unless your board uses Silicon Image drivers).

2. You can get a floppy drive and install it. They cost around $10-15.

I would do number 2. It's easier than the other method.

[Jarhed7276]

I looked at your motherboard manual (page 34) and SATA is enabled by default so I would think that your problem is just getting the SATA drivers installed.

[sweeper2]

yes, you need to install the SATA drivers ... my bios does not show the SATA drive... it will however show IDE drives...

once you boot up... (installing your operating system) ... you will need to click F8 or what ever it says to do to install the drivers...

but you might have to get the drivers off the interenet... and put them on a floppy disc .. that's the easiest way..

[JPMiller]

OK check your facts before confusing someone... (not to anyone in particular)
No-One caught "F8" instead of F6 ?
When booting from the OS disk, it will ask you to press F6 to install SATA drivers, NOT F8
If he has native SATA then that usually isn't necessary anyway...

You dont NEED to use the sata 1 connector...
Make sure all your connections are tight...
Then try another sata connector instead...
then try a different sata cable...

Do you have another system you could slave this drive to?
If so then you could check it with the MaxBlast utility...

[JPMiller]

this excerpt from the manual makes it sound as though you WILL need to install the drivers first...

Install Windows NT 4.0,2000,XP
1.Insert the bundled driver CD DISC into CD-ROM(G: ).Copy all files
and directories of G:\VIA chipset\SATA_Raid\DriverDisk\SATA folder to
a floppy disk.Make sure following directoties and files are copied into
floppy disk.
A:\
\Win2000
VIAsraid.inf
VIAsraid.sys
VIAsraid.cat
\Winnt40
VIAsraid.inf
VIAsraid.sys
\WinXP
VIAsraid.inf
VIAsraid.sys
VIAsraid.cat
Txtsetup.oem
VT8237
2.Install OS from CD-ROM.
3.Press “
F6
” when display “Press
F6
if you need to install a third party
SCSI or RAID driver...”
4.Insert floppy disk.
5.Choose the OS device driver wanted for loading.
6.Install OS.
7.Install driver after OS is installed.

When I ran into this on my last build, I decided I'd had it with floppies and used an IDE drive to install windows to...
I set eveything up the way I wanted, installed ALL drivers and programs...and then used the maxblast utility to clone it to the SATA drive and set it as the new boot device...
took out the IDE drive and it booted from the SATA drive perfectly.
This also has an added benefit for you if your building a second "clone" computer, because you already have a working setup that can be cloned to the other drive

this way your only installing windows once and cloning it twice

[Jarhed7276]

No-One caught "F8" instead of F6 ?

Thanks for catching that for me JP. I guess I was thinking of the license agreement.

[stroyal]

I started F8, I'll take the blame.

[Fat Man Stan]

JarHed-

Answer to your question about when i first boot up does it see the drives there. No. It just sees the DVD Rom i have. That is what is confusing me the most. It would be one thing if it even saw it. But it acts like it is not even hooked up.

Some other post recomended getting different cables... i have the second identical system that is having the same problem. The computers were ordered days apart from each other. So if one was working while the other was not i could say it was calbes or the drive but both doing the exact same thing to a "T" make me think it is something else.

[JPMiller]

Bottom line here, I believe you HAVE to either have the SATA drivers on a floppy, OR use an IDE drive to set things up first...
Your mobo wont recognize the drives until it has access to drivers...
Most native SATA boards allow you to boot from SATA drives without drivers, but not all

[Fat Man Stan]

Ok, thanks for your help... you know for being so much cheeper... this sure is not worth the head ache!!!

[demon_wolf]

I had a similar problem but got it fixed:

1. You must install the SATA Drivers for the Harddrive during XP Installation.

You will need to get the Drivers from the Manfacturers Website and put them onto Floppy.

2. If you are installing XP, it must have SP2. Anything before SP2 does not recognize SATA Drives.

If you have another version of XP without SP2 you can create a Slipstreamed Version. Look around online on how to do this, but basically it involves copying all Files from your XP CD, then adding SP2 and updating the XP Files, then burning the lot to another CD, then installing.

Hope this helps and you get it sorted out.

[abolith]

I recently had the exact same problem with a friends SATA on an ECS board (pain that they don't have SATA as a Bios boot option huh?). Try changing the boot sequence to SCSI instead of HDD-0. Once I did that it found the SATA drive after the IDE detect in post, it uses the RAID drivers on the Mobo to find SATA (dumb way of doing it imho).

of course getting an OS loaded is still going to be a pain if it doesn't have native SATA support (does win XP have this during cd boot and OS install?) I still had to load 3rd party drivers off a freakin floppy to get win2K pro sp4 to install right. if I didn't load the drivers it simply didn't find any HD to install to....hope my headache helps to lessen yours.

[cmptrgydv]

First if you are only using 1 sata drive, you do not need sata drivers installed,
You need to go into bios and turn off the raid function,
When you try to install xp it’s looking for a raid drive, your not using raid,