SATA Drive

Orionetheus

I bought a Raptor 73 gig hard drive SATA and basically...I cant get it to work...only because of windows and nothaving a floppy drive...or a drivers disc...

I bought a new floppy drive...(dont have a cable for it) I bought a controller card.....setup still didnt recognise it...

Windows can see it when booted....but I can install to it in windows setup....how can I fix this?

TouchingVirus

Orionetheus wrote:

I bought a Raptor 73 gig hard drive SATA and basically...I cant get it to work...only because of windows and nothaving a floppy drive...or a drivers disc...

I bought a new floppy drive...(dont have a cable for it) I bought a controller card.....setup still didnt recognise it...

Windows can see it when booted....but I can install to it in windows setup....how can I fix this?

The BIOS identifies the drive, yet Windows Setup doesnt. So i presume that you're trying to install windows onto this Raptor drive?

You'll probably need the drivers for the drive on a floppy to place into the drive when prompted.

Just in case anyone else has this problem and doesn't want to spend an hour figuring it out...

If you are loading Windows XP onto a computer with a serial ATA (SATA) hard drive, you will have to manually load the SATA drivers.

As suggested on this usenet post, you need to put the drivers on a floppy disk.

Copy the drivers from motherboard support CD *\DriverDisk\SATA\*.* into root directory of floppy disk. (i.e. root directory of floppy disk should contain \pide and \sata folders, txtsetup.oem, etc. files.)

Then, boot system by Windows XP installation CD, when the message "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver" shows up, press "F6". Then, press "S" to specify additional device when next screen pops up. Put the driver floppy disk you made in and press enter to continue. If the floppy disk is made successfully, the installation program will ask for selecting driver. Please then select "VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller(Windows XP)".) After SATA driver loaded and Windows XP can recognize the SATA HDD, you can continue to install Windows XP as usual.

This should work fine if you have the drivers on a CD somewhere.

Here's what not to do:
1) Pull floppy drive from another computer
2) Get lazy and not install the floppy, simply hang it by cables on the side of computer
3) After using floppy, allow the exposed circuitboard to touch the case
4) Watch smoke come from the floppy drive since the power was shorted out
5) Toss floppy drive in the trash

Orionetheus

I dont have a floppy drive......in my computer...I dont have the cable for one but I went and bought a new one (just today realised I didnt have cables)

My motherboard is a k8t neo if thats any help...Im currently plugged into a controller....

DonkeyRhubarb

My mate had the same problem. Then when he heard that I just got a new system and didnt have to do any of that on my new sata2 HD, he went out and bought one himself. Im kinda afraid to tell him that it might not actually work for him now without all this hassle. Does anyone know why I didnt have to go through any of this? Just put in the XP CD and it worked. I have a Samsung Spinpoint P120 HD.

AnCapaillMor

Your XP disc could be service pack 2, that recognises sata2 and raptors. Orion get a usb floppy?

jor el

So you're trying to install Windows on an SATA disc. What you need is the driver for the SATA controller (not the hards disk as hard disks don't need drivers) to be presented to setup when it launches. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is on floppy. Even if the driver is on another hard disk you can't point setup to that location.

You press F6 when setup launches to use 3rd party SCSI/RAID/SATA drivers and it only looks on the floppy for them. Another stupid and ridiculous feature from Microsoft.

The only thing you can do is install a floppy drive cable to use the drive you bought. Failing that, install on an IDE disc.

If you don't have the driver disk for the SATA controller on that board, you can get it on MSIs website at http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_detail.php?UID=496&kind=1 and extract it to a floppy disc.

Dman_15

get nlite, recomplile xp cd with the raid drivers built in. (basically copy the windows cd to your hd and add the drivers to it using this program)
http://nuhi.msfn.org/

A lot of effort but it will work. Tutorials on the website. I use it so no i dont need ot use F6 to install my nvidia raid during setup

jor el

Yes, nlite is probably the best solution, though if he's trying to get windows installed he may not have access to a second PC to do that. Connecting the floppy is the fastes route.

You can also use nlite to remove loads of crap from a Windows installation too. Very highly recommended.