SATA nightmare

[Bobby]

I bought a new SATA hard drive a couple of weeks ago -- and I've been trying
to install it since.

It's a Maxtor 250Gb SATA drive (the one with a 16Mb buffer).

It works fine as a slave drive to my old (PATA) drive but whenever I
disconnect my old drive and try to do a fresh install of Windows (XP, SR2)
on it, Windows tells me "Setup did not find any hard disks installed on your
computer."

But the drive is listed in my BIOS setup (oddly described as "VIAVT6420 1st
HDD") and appears (briefly) during the boot process (when system devices are
scanned, the drive appears on channel SerialCh0).

Any ideas what is causing this problem? I appreciate that Windows sees SATA
drives as SCSI/RAID devices and I know that Windows provides an opportunity
to load a third party driver for SCSI devices during setup but my Maxtor
drive came without any software.

Help!

Bobby

 

[peterk]

Its the MotherBoard Manufacturer that provides the SATA drivers that XP
needs to load at a certain point during the install.
At the point where it says push F6 if you need to load SCSI drivers.
You normally find them on the CD that came with the mobo and from there you
need to copy them to a Floppy drive where XP will look for them.
peterk

 

[Chris]

I bought a new SATA hard drive a couple of weeks ago -- and I've been
trying to install it since.

It's a Maxtor 250Gb SATA drive (the one with a 16Mb buffer).

It works fine as a slave drive to my old (PATA) drive but whenever I
disconnect my old drive and try to do a fresh install of Windows (XP, SR2)
on it, Windows tells me "Setup did not find any hard disks installed on
your computer."

But the drive is listed in my BIOS setup (oddly described as "VIAVT6420
1st HDD") and appears (briefly) during the boot process (when system
devices are scanned, the drive appears on channel SerialCh0).

Any ideas what is causing this problem? I appreciate that Windows sees
SATA drives as SCSI/RAID devices and I know that Windows provides an
opportunity to load a third party driver for SCSI devices during setup but
my Maxtor drive came without any software.

Help!

Bobby

Unless your copy of Windows has SP2 you will have to make a driver disk from
the motherboard CD or download a driver from their web site. You will have
to press F6 on install to load this. It's not the drive but the SATA
controller that is not picked up.




--
Chris
Technical director CKCCOMPUSCRIPT
Apple Computers, Intel, Roland audio, ATI, Microsoft, Sun Solaris, Cisco and
Silicone Graphics.
Wholesale distributor and specialist audio visual computers and servers
FREE SUPPORT @,
http://www.ckccomp.plus.com/site/page.HTM
(e-mail address removed)

 

[R. McCarty]

It's not the drive that requires a driver, but the SATA/Raid controller
of your motherboard. You need to visit the Motherboard vendor site
and download the XP drivers for it.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

WinXP SP2 wouldn't have SATA drivers, they need to be obtained from the
motherboard manufacturer (usually on the supplied CD as peter has
mentioned). SP2 (or SP1) is necessary for IDE drives larger than 137GB.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[xfile]

Hi,

Assuming the physical installation of the SATA drive is correct, the
following are for your reference,

As someone indicated, it is not the drive, per se, needs the driver
(according to Seagate) it is the controller on the board needs the driver,
but the driver may as well be provided by the BIOS updates or initial BIOS.

Please make sure the IDE device settings of the BIOS is set to S-ATA+P-ATA
if you planning to use both serial and parallel hard drives, and unless you
wish to install use RAID, set configure S-ATA to RAID as No.

I wonder if you had one HD or two during the clean installation. If you have
more than one HD, you need to double check the Boot section of the BIOS
settings, in which - depending MB models and manufacturers (Asus P4P800 SE
for me), there are two additional settings.

One is similar to: Hard drive (???) in which list the order of your hard
drive and you will need to move the one (in this case, the new SATA) to be
the 1st hard drive.

After you complete this step, go to the option above this one and see the
order of boot device, and it shall list the new SATA as the first one. But
you may want to do this step later and use DVD or CD drive first during the
initial installation and change after the reboot.

I just finished a clean installation with Seagate SATA 160G without any
identification of the HD and was not required any drivers.

As always, you may also read MB menu to see if there are any special
instructions about SATA or others.

Hope this helps.

 

[Carl G]

Hi Bobby
I have a DFI Lanparty board with 4 sata connections and 2 IDE connections.
To just use the 2 SATA connections i do not have to load any special
drivers. To use the other 2 SATA connections that are for Raid setup i don't
need any special drivers to use them as Sata drives, just turn on the Raid
setup in the BIOS.
But to set up a Raid setup i have to install The raid drivers at
setup,(F6).I have my Sata controler in the Bios set to AUTO.
Hope tis helps.

 

[Bobby]

Thanks.

I did that and Windows found the driver on the diskette - and appeared to
load it - then... nothing. I still got the "Windows cannot find a hard drive
on this computer" message.

I'm at a complete loss with this damn drive.

Bobby

 

[Bobby]

To just use the 2 SATA connections i do not have to load any special

drivers.

And I am deeply suspicious that I have to. My mobo is pretty new (3 months)
and the BIOS is dated August 2004 - so SATA was pretty well known at that
time.

I am suspicious that my problems relate to a hardware problem with either
the drive or the motherboard SATA connections.

Is that likely?

Bobby

 

[frodo]

ok, let's start over and try again.

1) you WILL need special drivers for the SATA, _usually_. Unless the SATA
can be mapped into the IDE-1 and IDE-2 slots (as the 865/875 chipset can
be, using combined mode), the SATA's will need special drivers. These are
the RAID drivers, even if you don't place the device into RAID mode.

2) when you say "it appeared to load the drivers" (after F6), did it
present a list of SCSI/etc drivers for you to choose from, and did you
select the one from the flopy? You need to know what the name of that
driver is, it won't specifically ID it as "the one on the flopy", but it
usually list the flopy one very near the end of the list. If you did not
choose the right one it might appear to load things ok, but then it won't
be able to find the disk.

look on your flopy; there should be a file named TXTSETUP.OEM. open it
w/ notepad. look at the top, under the [scsi] section, there should be a
string that ID's the driver; that's the name setup will display on the F6
menu. the other contents of this file id's all the other files that should
also be on the flopy - make sure they are really present. typically it's a
..CAT, a .INF, and a .SYS

Lastly, walk thru your bios settings one more time, and make sure the SATA
interface is enabled and set to the correct mode. Your MB manual should
help here. And then watch the bios display as the system boots, it should
show some info about that interface (tho it may speed by so fast you can't
see it.)

good luck.

 

[Bobby]

Thanks for taking tohe time to help Frodo.

1) you WILL need special drivers for the SATA, _usually_. Unless the SATA
can be mapped into the IDE-1 and IDE-2 slots (as the 865/875 chipset can
be, using combined mode), the SATA's will need special drivers. These are
the RAID drivers, even if you don't place the device into RAID mode.

Do you also speak English? ;-)

2) when you say "it appeared to load the drivers" (after F6), did it
present a list of SCSI/etc drivers for you to choose from, and did you
select the one from the flopy?

Yes. It listed a bunch of "Promise SATA drivers" for a range of operating
systems (Windows 2003, XP, 2000, NT). I chose the XP driver.

You need to know what the name of that
driver is, it won't specifically ID it as "the one on the flopy", but it
usually list the flopy one very near the end of the list. If you did not
choose the right one it might appear to load things ok, but then it won't
be able to find the disk.

look on your flopy; there should be a file named TXTSETUP.OEM. open it
w/ notepad. look at the top, under the [scsi] section, there should be a
string that ID's the driver; that's the name setup will display on the F6
menu. the other contents of this file id's all the other files that should
also be on the flopy - make sure they are really present. typically it's a
.CAT, a .INF, and a .SYS

Lastly, walk thru your bios settings one more time, and make sure the SATA
interface is enabled and set to the correct mode. Your MB manual should
help here.

The mobo manual is rubbish.

And then watch the bios display as the system boots, it should
show some info about that interface (tho it may speed by so fast you can't
see it.)

good luck.

Yes, it's hard to see. But it does list the SATA drive. Oddly, it lists it
in the RAID BIOS screen and not in the SATA BIOS screen. If I connect the
drive to the RAID connector, then it displays in the SATA BIOS screen and
not the RAID BIOS screen.

There is something odd going on. I'm pretty sure that I should not have to
load a driver for a standard (albeit large - 250Mb) SATA drive. My mobo is
only three months old. The BIOS is dated August 2004. The fact that Windows
can't see the drive (even when I manually load the driver) makes me think
that either the drive is defective (although it works OK as a slave to my
PATA drive) or the SATA interface on the mobo is defective.

Why is SATA so complex? Windows calls it SCSI/RAID. The BIOS lists it as a
VIA-something-or-other. What's wrong with the BIOS and Windows calling it
SATA1? And you appear to need a PhD in RAID Technology to install a SATA
drive.

 

[Bobby]

Thanks for taking tohe time to help Frodo.

1) you WILL need special drivers for the SATA, _usually_. Unless the SATA
can be mapped into the IDE-1 and IDE-2 slots (as the 865/875 chipset can
be, using combined mode), the SATA's will need special drivers. These are
the RAID drivers, even if you don't place the device into RAID mode.

Do you also speak English? ;-)

2) when you say "it appeared to load the drivers" (after F6), did it
present a list of SCSI/etc drivers for you to choose from, and did you
select the one from the flopy?

Yes. It listed a bunch of "Promise SATA drivers" for a range of operating
systems (Windows 2003, XP, 2000, NT). I chose the XP driver.

You need to know what the name of that
driver is, it won't specifically ID it as "the one on the flopy", but it
usually list the flopy one very near the end of the list. If you did not
choose the right one it might appear to load things ok, but then it won't
be able to find the disk.

look on your flopy; there should be a file named TXTSETUP.OEM. open it
w/ notepad. look at the top, under the [scsi] section, there should be a
string that ID's the driver; that's the name setup will display on the F6
menu. the other contents of this file id's all the other files that should
also be on the flopy - make sure they are really present. typically it's a
.CAT, a .INF, and a .SYS

Lastly, walk thru your bios settings one more time, and make sure the SATA
interface is enabled and set to the correct mode. Your MB manual should
help here.

The mobo manual is rubbish.

And then watch the bios display as the system boots, it should
show some info about that interface (tho it may speed by so fast you can't
see it.)

good luck.

Yes, it's hard to see. But it does list the SATA drive. Oddly, it lists it
in the RAID BIOS screen and not in the SATA BIOS screen. If I connect the
drive to the RAID connector, then it displays in the SATA BIOS screen and
not the RAID BIOS screen.

There is something odd going on. I'm pretty sure that I should not have to
load a driver for a standard (albeit large - 250Mb) SATA drive. My mobo is
only three months old. The BIOS is dated August 2004. The fact that Windows
can't see the drive (even when I manually load the driver) makes me think
that either the drive is defective (although it works OK as a slave to my
PATA drive) or the SATA interface on the mobo is defective.

Why is SATA so complex? Windows calls it SCSI/RAID. The BIOS lists it as a
VIA-something-or-other. What's wrong with the BIOS and Windows calling it
SATA1? And you appear to need a PhD in RAID Technology to install a SATA
drive.

 

[Bob Wright]

On my DFI board with WinXP, WD Sata drive, the drive was not recognized
during install while it was pre-formatted. When I deleted the partitions
and formatting XP recognized the drive, installed normally. Also
needed to use the F6 for the sata raid driver during install.

Bob

 

[xfile]

Hi,

I recently installed a new Seagate ST3160827AS (160G SATA) and had a clean
Windows installation, and experienced no problem at all - maybe I am just
lucky.

Before I bought the HD and did the installation, I did some research and
from what I've learned:

(1) Most SATA HDs do not need driver (according to Seagate and other
documents) but some controllers may need it. However, if you are using
mentioned Intel 865/875 chipset, you won't need it as well (as I am using
864 chipset) unless you turned on RAID function,

(2) The following BIOS settings may need to be adjusted (based on what I've
learned although many of them are default values):

IDE: Enhanced Mode
IDE native mode: SATA + PATA
SATA as RAID: No
IDE detection time (???): 35

PnP OS (this is to let BIOS or OS to take charge of PnP devices): NO
PS: This part has been addressed several times by several people for similar
problem but I set it to Yes during initial installation and did not know the
difference.

(3) Windows, to my knowledge, will identify it as IDE device and will list
as using DMA 5 although (based on the confirmation from Seagate's technical
support) it is using SATA 150 mode for which Windows "does not have native
support to show these values".

I am not sure if you have ever checked BIOS settings as mentioned and/or
Maxtor's site for installation guide but hope this helps and good luck.

Thanks for taking tohe time to help Frodo.

1) you WILL need special drivers for the SATA, _usually_. Unless the
SATA
can be mapped into the IDE-1 and IDE-2 slots (as the 865/875 chipset can
be, using combined mode), the SATA's will need special drivers. These are
the RAID drivers, even if you don't place the device into RAID mode.

Do you also speak English? ;-)

2) when you say "it appeared to load the drivers" (after F6), did it
present a list of SCSI/etc drivers for you to choose from, and did you
select the one from the flopy?

Yes. It listed a bunch of "Promise SATA drivers" for a range of operating
systems (Windows 2003, XP, 2000, NT). I chose the XP driver.

You need to know what the name of that
driver is, it won't specifically ID it as "the one on the flopy", but it
usually list the flopy one very near the end of the list. If you did not
choose the right one it might appear to load things ok, but then it won't
be able to find the disk.

look on your flopy; there should be a file named TXTSETUP.OEM. open it
w/ notepad. look at the top, under the [scsi] section, there should be a
string that ID's the driver; that's the name setup will display on the F6
menu. the other contents of this file id's all the other files that
should
also be on the flopy - make sure they are really present. typically it's
a
.CAT, a .INF, and a .SYS

Lastly, walk thru your bios settings one more time, and make sure the
SATA
interface is enabled and set to the correct mode. Your MB manual should
help here.

The mobo manual is rubbish.

And then watch the bios display as the system boots, it should
show some info about that interface (tho it may speed by so fast you
can't
see it.)

good luck.

Yes, it's hard to see. But it does list the SATA drive. Oddly, it lists it
in the RAID BIOS screen and not in the SATA BIOS screen. If I connect the
drive to the RAID connector, then it displays in the SATA BIOS screen and
not the RAID BIOS screen.

There is something odd going on. I'm pretty sure that I should not have to
load a driver for a standard (albeit large - 250Mb) SATA drive. My mobo is
only three months old. The BIOS is dated August 2004. The fact that
Windows
can't see the drive (even when I manually load the driver) makes me think
that either the drive is defective (although it works OK as a slave to my
PATA drive) or the SATA interface on the mobo is defective.

Why is SATA so complex? Windows calls it SCSI/RAID. The BIOS lists it as a
VIA-something-or-other. What's wrong with the BIOS and Windows calling it
SATA1? And you appear to need a PhD in RAID Technology to install a SATA
drive.

 

[Len Mattix]

For whatever it is worth I have never needed a driver to install a
stand-alone SATA drive on a computer. This is with the Intel 865PE chipset
and the Nforce 4 chipset. Both detected the SATA drive without a problem.

Now if you enable RAID or the Boot 'Prom then that becomes a different
story! If a RAID controler screen pops up at start-up and you have a single
drive, then it is not set up correctly in BIOS. Also if you are using a
third party RAID controller then also all bets are off. On my Intel board
as posted earlier the SATA drives is seen as connected to the standard IDE
controller. On the Nforce4 board if the Nvidia connectors (the proper ones)
are used it is seen as a normal drive. If connected to the imporper
controller a single drive will not work. If connected to the Silicon Image
controller then the F6 options must be used.

Yep, it is a bit of a pain but manageable. When I had an IDE drive (2)
setup as RAID 0 on my intel board it was hanging off of a VIA controller -
to setup the raid I had to first go into the VIA BIOS and then use F6 to
include the VIA controller driver for XP setup to use. So the SATA setup is
not anymore complicated actually.

Anyway, good luck,

Len

Thanks for taking tohe time to help Frodo.

1) you WILL need special drivers for the SATA, _usually_. Unless the
SATA
can be mapped into the IDE-1 and IDE-2 slots (as the 865/875 chipset can
be, using combined mode), the SATA's will need special drivers. These are
the RAID drivers, even if you don't place the device into RAID mode.

Do you also speak English? ;-)

2) when you say "it appeared to load the drivers" (after F6), did it
present a list of SCSI/etc drivers for you to choose from, and did you
select the one from the flopy?

Yes. It listed a bunch of "Promise SATA drivers" for a range of operating
systems (Windows 2003, XP, 2000, NT). I chose the XP driver.

You need to know what the name of that
driver is, it won't specifically ID it as "the one on the flopy", but it
usually list the flopy one very near the end of the list. If you did not
choose the right one it might appear to load things ok, but then it won't
be able to find the disk.

look on your flopy; there should be a file named TXTSETUP.OEM. open it
w/ notepad. look at the top, under the [scsi] section, there should be a
string that ID's the driver; that's the name setup will display on the F6
menu. the other contents of this file id's all the other files that
should
also be on the flopy - make sure they are really present. typically it's
a
.CAT, a .INF, and a .SYS

Lastly, walk thru your bios settings one more time, and make sure the
SATA
interface is enabled and set to the correct mode. Your MB manual should
help here.

The mobo manual is rubbish.

And then watch the bios display as the system boots, it should
show some info about that interface (tho it may speed by so fast you
can't
see it.)

good luck.

Yes, it's hard to see. But it does list the SATA drive. Oddly, it lists it
in the RAID BIOS screen and not in the SATA BIOS screen. If I connect the
drive to the RAID connector, then it displays in the SATA BIOS screen and
not the RAID BIOS screen.

There is something odd going on. I'm pretty sure that I should not have to
load a driver for a standard (albeit large - 250Mb) SATA drive. My mobo is
only three months old. The BIOS is dated August 2004. The fact that
Windows
can't see the drive (even when I manually load the driver) makes me think
that either the drive is defective (although it works OK as a slave to my
PATA drive) or the SATA interface on the mobo is defective.

Why is SATA so complex? Windows calls it SCSI/RAID. The BIOS lists it as a
VIA-something-or-other. What's wrong with the BIOS and Windows calling it
SATA1? And you appear to need a PhD in RAID Technology to install a SATA
drive.

 

[DAH]

I've come into this very late, having joined the NG just to ask
advice, but I seem to recognise the problem, having suffered the same
with an ordinary ATA drive.The BIOS could see it, but XP couldn't. My
problem was solved by using Start/Settings/Control
Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. The
drive *did* show there, and (as I remember) showed as unformatted
space. A right click offered a "format" option, which I used to make
it NTFS, and all worked fine from then on.
If you've already tried this, my apologies - as I say, late into group
and don't have the full thread.
Good luck.

 

[Jack]

Make sure your boot drive is on SATA "0" on the MB.

 

[NoneOfBusiness]

Thanks for taking tohe time to help Frodo.

1) you WILL need special drivers for the SATA, _usually_. Unless the SATA
can be mapped into the IDE-1 and IDE-2 slots (as the 865/875 chipset can
be, using combined mode), the SATA's will need special drivers. These are
the RAID drivers, even if you don't place the device into RAID mode.

Do you also speak English? ;-)

2) when you say "it appeared to load the drivers" (after F6), did it
present a list of SCSI/etc drivers for you to choose from, and did you
select the one from the flopy?

Yes. It listed a bunch of "Promise SATA drivers" for a range of operating
systems (Windows 2003, XP, 2000, NT). I chose the XP driver.

You need to know what the name of that
driver is, it won't specifically ID it as "the one on the flopy", but it
usually list the flopy one very near the end of the list. If you did not
choose the right one it might appear to load things ok, but then it won't
be able to find the disk.

look on your flopy; there should be a file named TXTSETUP.OEM. open it
w/ notepad. look at the top, under the [scsi] section, there should be a
string that ID's the driver; that's the name setup will display on the F6
menu. the other contents of this file id's all the other files that should
also be on the flopy - make sure they are really present. typically it's a
.CAT, a .INF, and a .SYS

Lastly, walk thru your bios settings one more time, and make sure the SATA
interface is enabled and set to the correct mode. Your MB manual should
help here.

The mobo manual is rubbish.

And then watch the bios display as the system boots, it should
show some info about that interface (tho it may speed by so fast you can't
see it.)

good luck.

Yes, it's hard to see. But it does list the SATA drive. Oddly, it lists it
in the RAID BIOS screen and not in the SATA BIOS screen. If I connect the
drive to the RAID connector, then it displays in the SATA BIOS screen and
not the RAID BIOS screen.

There is something odd going on. I'm pretty sure that I should not have to
load a driver for a standard (albeit large - 250Mb) SATA drive. My mobo is
only three months old. The BIOS is dated August 2004. The fact that Windows
can't see the drive (even when I manually load the driver) makes me think
that either the drive is defective (although it works OK as a slave to my
PATA drive) or the SATA interface on the mobo is defective.

Why is SATA so complex? Windows calls it SCSI/RAID. The BIOS lists it as a
VIA-something-or-other. What's wrong with the BIOS and Windows calling it
SATA1? And you appear to need a PhD in RAID Technology to install a SATA
drive.

SATA1???????

Shouldn't this be plugged into SATA0?