Installing SATA Drive

[Cueball]

Hi,

I'm having issues installing a new WD 250GB SATA Drive on my system.

I have an emachines D4362

Windows XP SP2
P4 3GHZ w HT
1.5GB DDR Ram
4x Max DVD±RW; 48x Max CD-ROM Drive
160GB WD Primary IDE Drive
80 GB WD Secondary IDE Drive

There is no SATA connection on the motherboard so I've installed a
Belkin Serial ATA PCI Card to accomodate the drive.

I've successfully installed the drivers and can see the SCSI Controller
on the Hardware setup, however, no matter where I place this drive,
when I have power connected to it, it fires up but I can't get past the
E machines splash screen. Can anyone point me in the right direction on
this as this is my first time dealing with SATA? Any assistance is
greatly appreciated.

 

[DL]

Assuming you installed the PCI card/drivers correctly and that the card
provides the same sata version as your WD, ie sata1 or sata2 then this might
indicate a problem with either the WD or the PCI card

Allthough does the driver/bios utility for this card require you to access
it on first boot to configure the raid/sata?
Some controlers require you to set a single sata hd as JBOD before you can
access the drive.

Hi,

I'm having issues installing a new WD 250GB SATA Drive on my system.

I have an emachines D4362

Windows XP SP2
P4 3GHZ w HT
1.5GB DDR Ram
4x Max DVD±RW; 48x Max CD-ROM Drive
160GB WD Primary IDE Drive
80 GB WD Secondary IDE Drive

There is no SATA connection on the motherboard so I've installed a
Belkin Serial ATA PCI Card to accomodate the drive.

I've successfully installed the drivers and can see the SCSI Controller
on the Hardware setup, however, no matter where I place this drive,
when I have power connected to it, it fires up but I can't get past the
E machines splash screen. Can anyone point me in the right direction on
this as this is my first time dealing with SATA? Any assistance is
greatly appreciated.

 

[Anna]

Hi,

I'm having issues installing a new WD 250GB SATA Drive on my system.

I have an emachines D4362

Windows XP SP2
P4 3GHZ w HT
1.5GB DDR Ram
4x Max DVD±RW; 48x Max CD-ROM Drive
160GB WD Primary IDE Drive
80 GB WD Secondary IDE Drive

There is no SATA connection on the motherboard so I've installed a
Belkin Serial ATA PCI Card to accomodate the drive.

I've successfully installed the drivers and can see the SCSI Controller
on the Hardware setup, however, no matter where I place this drive,
when I have power connected to it, it fires up but I can't get past the
E machines splash screen. Can anyone point me in the right direction on
this as this is my first time dealing with SATA? Any assistance is
greatly appreciated.


Cueball:
Just to confirm...

1. There's no problem with the system when your PATA HDDs are connected
without the SATA HDD being connected, right? The system boots without
incident and functions without any problems, right?

2. The SATA HDD is a "virgin" HDD at this point, yes?
Unpartitioned/unformatted, right? And you've rechecked its connection to the
SATA controller card, right? And you're sure it's getting power?

3. You're sure the Belkin card is properly seated in its PCI slot, yes? Do
you have another PCI slot where you can move the card to? If so, do it.

4. I assume your Belkin card supports SATA-II, right? And your WD HDD is
SATA-II, right? But if not, you're aware of the jumper configuration to
limit (if necessary) a SATA-II data interface to (we'll call it) SATA-I,
right?

5. Have you tried booting into Safe mode?

6. Have you been in touch with eMachines and Belkin tech support to see if
they can be of any help?

I have to add that we've encountered more than a few problems of one sort or
another with these add-on SATA controller cards. It got to a point where we
generally recommended against their use except as a last resort. If a user
had to have SATA capability we recommended, if possible, a new motherboard
having built-in SATA capability. But it's my impression that the latest
generation of these controller cards supporting SATA-II capability are much
more reliable then their older brethren.

Please keep us informed as to your progress in overcoming this problem.
Anna

 

[Dave]

Hi Anna,

After reading your response, I reverified everything described and
found the card only supported SATA I but the Drive was in fact SATA II.
Once I adjusted the jumper settings on the drive I was able to access
the RAID Utility and view the drive, so this issue is resolved.

I did notice after I accessed the utility my BIOS had changed and I
needed to adjust the boot order so I could get back into my main
drive. I'm not sure if this is an issue yet. I'll have more time this
weekend to fiddle with it and see if its going to operate correctly.
I'll let everyone know if any other issues arise.

Thanks for your input, it was very valuable to me.


Dave

 

[Paul Knudsen]

I couldn't get SATA to work on my machine while there was a (parallel)
ATA drive installed. But when I took out the old drive it was fine.

Later research led me to believe it was an irq problem, but I just got
a USB cage for the old drive and used it for backup.