Installing SATA Drivers - Driving Me Nuts

[Rat_uk]

i am trying to install winxp home edition OEM onto an asus p2-ae2 pundit
machine sing a maxtor diamondmax 10 sata drive.

the cd is a sp2 slipstream from my original home edition cd. windows (and
the bios) do not recognise the sata drive at start up and so i press f6 to
install sata driver.

asus do not supply a driver on their installation disk and the maxtor sata
drivers don't work. i get a number of errors but basically the maxtor sata
drivers will not load and therefore i am stuck trying to get xp onto my
machine with no help from asus website at all.

there are many forums filled with people who are having the same problem but
no-one seems to have an answer. does anyone know how to get the motherboard
and/or windows to recognise the sata drive.

i have read somewhere that it is because i am using OEm disk but i have used
this to install 3rd party drivers on other machines.

 

[philo]

i am trying to install winxp home edition OEM onto an asus p2-ae2 pundit
machine sing a maxtor diamondmax 10 sata drive.

the cd is a sp2 slipstream from my original home edition cd. windows (and
the bios) do not recognise the sata drive at start up and so i press f6 to
install sata driver.

asus do not supply a driver on their installation disk and the maxtor sata
drivers don't work. i get a number of errors but basically the maxtor sata
drivers will not load and therefore i am stuck trying to get xp onto my
machine with no help from asus website at all.

there are many forums filled with people who are having the same problem
but no-one seems to have an answer. does anyone know how to get the
motherboard and/or windows to recognise the sata drive.

i have read somewhere that it is because i am using OEm disk but i have
used this to install 3rd party drivers on other machines.

go to the Asus website and see if they have the right driver there

 

[Steve]

go to the Asus website and see if they have the right driver there

Check the BIOS versions for your motherboard. I have this problem on an
ABit VI7 board, the BIOS is at V11 but the latest release is V18. At least
two later versions deal with SATA issues. The same is true of the drivers.
I've bought a new ASUS motherboard - P4V800D-X which are retailing in the UK
for around 30 GBP ~ 54USD, it seemed reasonable to get an up to date board
and sort the ABIT in slower time.

The ASUS board picked up the SATA drive straight out of the box. I've set
the mode to SATA-IDE because I don't want to get involved in RAID just now.

Now I've discovered my XP install kit doesn't have LBA enabled so I need to
build a slipstream disk. I could have saved a load of time buying a PATA
drive!

Steve

 

[Rat_uk]

asus do not have a driver on their website. they don't even have the word
'sata'

 

[Rat_uk]

i'm trying a bios update now....

Check the BIOS versions for your motherboard. I have this problem on an
ABit VI7 board, the BIOS is at V11 but the latest release is V18. At
least two later versions deal with SATA issues. The same is true of the
drivers. I've bought a new ASUS motherboard - P4V800D-X which are
retailing in the UK for around 30 GBP ~ 54USD, it seemed reasonable to
get an up to date board and sort the ABIT in slower time.

The ASUS board picked up the SATA drive straight out of the box. I've set
the mode to SATA-IDE because I don't want to get involved in RAID just
now.

Now I've discovered my XP install kit doesn't have LBA enabled so I need
to build a slipstream disk. I could have saved a load of time buying a
PATA drive!

Steve

 

[Rat_uk]

bios upgrade done. still does not detect sata drive.

 

[Glen]

The board should recognise SATA drives out of the box or with a BIOS update.
You should only need F6 for RAID drivers. Have a look on the board and make
sure you have the SATA drive plugged into the right connector and not a RAID
connector. Have a look in the BIOS to make sure the right controllers are
enabled. I've seen problems like you describe when the drive is plugged into
a RAID controller and the controller is turned off in the BIOS. Double check
the manual and make sure you have it set up right, also try putting the
drive into one of the other SATA controllers. I have seen a Asus manual
which has the wrong information printed about the controllers which meant
the SATA drives were installed to the wrong controller.
~~
Please repost if you find the fault

Glen P
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Bill Drake]

You need to figure out what RAID Chip is used on your
motherboard. According to the Asus website, the
motherboard in your machine uses the VIA KM800
Northbridge and the VIA VT8237R Southbridge.

The VT8237R (the "R" is the significant factor)
contains the SATA interface components. The
RAID chipset driver for this chip is the driver you
need to properly interface to your SATA Drive.

See the ViaArena website at: http://www.viaarena.com/

This website is the place for the latest info on VIA
chipset drivers, compatibility issues, bugfix-info and
all the necessary BIOS tweaks required to properly
interface to your Hard Disk.

Please note you will require a Floppy Drive to be
installed in your machine -- and you will need to create
the required Floppy Disk for the VT8237R SATA drivers
in order to perform the F6-floppy install process to get
the required SATA Drivers loaded so WXP can "see"
your SATA Hard Disk.

(You can also use nLite to merge the VT8237R SATA
drivers into your SP2 slipstream and make a new
CD-ROM disk with on-disk VT8237R SATA support.
Google for nLite for more info on how to use nLite
to make upgraded WXP install CDs.)

Note: Maxtor is known to have a problem with some
nVidia-chipset motherboards and SATA drives.
This manifests as a "disappearing" hard disk
(failure to detect the drive) - which is exactly
what you are describing. You could have a
similar problem - and you may need to contact
Maxtor for a firmware upgrade to your Hard
Disk to allow the disk to be reliably detected by
the SATA Hardware on your new motherboard.


Hope this helps.


Best I can do for now. <tm>


Bill

 

[Rat_uk]

the problem seems to be that the bios (and i have the latest) does not even
recognise the maxtor 6v300fo hdd. this hard drive doesn't even appear on the
maxtor website.
i am able to load drivers at the f6 stage but the hdd is still not detected
because the board/bios is not detecting it.

 

[DL]

seems to have been a number of posts reporting problems with maxtor sata
drives, if its sata2 try setting the hd jumper for sata1

 

[Rat_uk]

just found this.... don't knowif it solves it or not. i'm not prepared to go
altering new products but could be interesting to hear from maxtor. i'm
waiting for a reply.

http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29207

 

[Rat_uk]

ok.

despite what it says about not needing to adjust jumper settings on sata
drives, i adjusted the jumper pin on my 300gb sata maxtor 6v300fo hdd.

it was installed to the right of four pins. i moved it o the two on the
left. on the hdd casing it says : sata 1.5gb mode setting if you select
these two pins. the default setting is 3.0gb (i have no idea what this
means).

as soon as i did this my hdd was detected by bios BUT NOT IN THE IDE FIELD.
IT ONLY SHOWS UP IN THE BOOT CONFIGURATION MENU. it is ami bios.

now, windows recognises it and so does maxblast 4, so i'm uo and running
after 10 hours of research and foul language.

support for these products falls well behind the users needs.

p.s i do not know the significance of 1.5gb or 3.0gb setting, so if anyone
can enlighten us then please do!

 

[DL]

As I said its sata1 and sata2, 2 supports? higher throughput

 

[Bill Drake]

The compatibility-jumper on the drive changes the drive's
operating parameters so it works as if it was an older series
of drive using a 1.5Gb/second transfer rate rather than a
newer series of drive using a 3.0Gb/second transfer rate.

Also, along with the above, NCQ (a go-fast feature) is
disabled using the 1.5Gb/second option and enabled using
the 3.0Gb/second option.


The standard solution to your problem is to obtain the latest
firmware update for your hard disks and update the firmware
for each hard disk so it is properly compatible with the SATA
controller on your new motherboard.

However, please note the compatibility caveats mentioned at
short-media. For highest compatibility and lowest firmware
failure-risk, you will need access to a motherboard using a
bog-stock Intel ICH5R-or-later SATA controller - in order to
perform the firmware update. Also, the update *may* require
that you have the compatibility jumpers removed in order to
update the firmware.

Note: I have always performed the abovementioned updates
on an Intel D875PBZ motherboard with the hard drives'
compatibility jumpers removed. As a result, I cannot
give you compatibilty advice on how the drives will
respond in a non-Intel environment. I do know there
have been tales-of-woe from the nVidia camp as far
as compatibility with the firmware update process is
concerned.

Furthermore, it is recommended that you update the firmware
on each drive individually (hook them up one-at-a-time).

Please note that you *may* completely lose all data on both
drives as a result of the firmware updates. And in order to
check the drives after the new firmware is installed, you will
have to remove the jumpers and then check to see if the drives
are properly detected by the BIOS. This is the final compatibility
check which confirms whether the firmware update has actually
done its job.


Best I can do for now. <tm>


Bill