Seeing a 200GB SATA under XP Home problem

[Kyle Comtesse]

Hi i need techincal asisstant on how to access a 200GB
SATA drive under Windows XP Home.

I am using a 40gb IDE hard drive for my operating system
and programs.

Windows Hardware detects the hard disk but doesn't give it
a drive letter.

if anyone can give me information on how to enable access
to the SATA drive with my primary IDE still attached it
would be greatly appreciated.

My system is as follows:

Pentium 4 2.6C HT
512 MB Dual Channel RAM
40GB Primary Master IDE HDD
200GB SATA-0 HDD
Standard CD-ROM
Combo DVD/CD-RW
Geforce4 MX440 AGP8X

My mainboard is INTEL D865GLC

Thanks
Kyle Comtesse

 

[Jerry]

One - your motherboard BIOS must be capable of supporting that size of a
drive.

Two - you must have SP1 installed and 48-bit LBA turned on.

 

[Tom]

Hi i need techincal asisstant on how to access a 200GB
SATA drive under Windows XP Home.

I am using a 40gb IDE hard drive for my operating system
and programs.

Windows Hardware detects the hard disk but doesn't give it
a drive letter.

if anyone can give me information on how to enable access
to the SATA drive with my primary IDE still attached it
would be greatly appreciated.

My system is as follows:

Pentium 4 2.6C HT
512 MB Dual Channel RAM
40GB Primary Master IDE HDD
200GB SATA-0 HDD
Standard CD-ROM
Combo DVD/CD-RW
Geforce4 MX440 AGP8X

My mainboard is INTEL D865GLC

Id Windows detects it, then you need to open Disk Management, and format
the drive, where during this process you can assign a drive letter to it. I
would do a quick format, just to see if that will solve your problem.

Click Start/Run, then type (no quotes) "diskmgmt.msc" and click OK. Then
right click the drive in question, choose format, and use the NTFS filing
system, which should be default. It is fairly easy after that to make your
letter assignments.

If you cannot perform this, then you may have to make changes in the BIOS
(your MOBO) for it to use the SATA drive. You will need to refer to your
BIOS documentation for this, or visit the Intel web site.

 

[Guest]

If your motherboard is SATA compatible, and it must be considering that there is an Interface plug into which you must have connected the SATA cable, then there will also be a separate folder in the MOBO CD that will have the SATA controllers' device drivers.

Before you go further be sure as to what you require from the SATA device: are you planning to run a RAID array or just wanting a single hard drive with better performance etc.

Your current IDE drive will remain the bootup Hard Drive, but you may also see extra devices which could be on an interface with higher ranking than the IDE interface.

If you have a MOBO capable of SATA then do not have any concerns regarding disk capacity being too large for BIOS.

Several things may be preventing the drive from being active on your XP system.

1. Have you enabled SATA as either RAID or BASE in BIOS. Make sure that it is BASE when there is only one SATA drive.

2. If Windows can see this device in Disk Management you may need to Format the disk before a drive letter can be assigned.

3. Make sure that you have loaded the SATA drivers in XP.

 

[Bob Harris]

When you say that windows detects the hard drive, do you mean that you can
see it in the "disk managment console"? If so, what is the format, as seen
by windows? If "raw", then you need to partition and format (FAT32 or
NTFS). This can be done form within the disk management ocnsole, or through
use of the XP recovery console, whihc is run form the XP CDROM. (The disk
management console is easier to use.)

However, if you mean that the power on testing (POST) sees the disk, then
that is not windows, but the motherboard/BIOS that is seeing the disk. A
good first step, but not enough by itself for XP to see the disk. For SATA
disks one usually needs to install special drivers, since XP was developed
before such disks were available. (This may no l,onger be true for newer
motherboards; consult the otherboard manual.) The drivers usually come from
the motherboard manufacturer, not from the disk manufacturer. Read the
motherboard manual for details. (If a pre-fabbed PC, contact the PC maker's
support site for more info. Try FAQs first, or a search on SATA.)

Finally, XP has native support for disks only as large as 127Gig. For XP to
correctly use (or maybe even see) a 200 Gig disk, SP-1 for XP must be
installed, and 48-bit LBA must be enabled. See the following links:

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1115

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;303013