SATA setup problem

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Hi everyone, recently bought some bits to upgrade the wife's PC. By mistake I bought a SATA HD. Now the motherboard supports them and have managed to install XP and everything OK apart from.... when I boot it up, I get a menu asking me if I want to boot XP or the old 98 drive. I've gone into the SATA boot menu, but the options for setting the RAID are greyed out and can't be got at. The other drive is small and was running 98 on it. Also the BIOS is not registering the new SATA drive, only the old one. However as I have said, it will boot to the XP drive if you select it from the menu, or allow the time out to finish on it's own. Hope all that makes sense and someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks, Thunderbird.

 

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What has happened is that the XP startup files have been put on the old drive, as WinXP does not (usualy) recognize SATA drives. So it has done a dual boot install.

Best is to start again. You need to do the following:
1) Read the docs for SATA for that motherboard. They should tell you how to make a driver floppy for SATA. Do that.
2) Remove the old drive completely
3) In the BIOS make sure that *all* the RAID options are off. If the option to make SATA 'look like IDE' is present - set that.
4) Boot the XP CD. If it doesn't see the SATA drive then reboot, and at the point where it asks for extra drivers feed it the floppy you made.

It should then install correctly.

After installation don't forget to install all the drivers from the motherboard CD.

Harry.

 

Hi Harry,
Thanks, that makes perfect sense. I think my main problem was that I wanted to keep the old drive as there are files on it that we need. I'll use your instructions tonight though, and once it's installed correctly, I'll re-attach the old drive and copy the relevant files. Thanks again

 

You should be able to keep the old drive there after re-attaching - but this will depend on the way the motherboard is setup.

Harry.

 

Hi Harry, no that didn't work. Xp installation just goes round in circles. The bios refuses to see the HD, although XP does with the floppy in it's drive. Take it out and it says there's no HD's. Beginning to lose the will to live now. Don't understand how manufacture can produce a board with a hot swappable SATA connection and then it won't see the drive when it's connected. Am now going to search the MB CD, it can't be this difficult, can it?regards thunderbird.

 

What motherboard is it you're using? Might be more recent drivers/BIOS etc on their website or maybe they've already come across your problem and have a solution?

 

Did you check the BIOS for SATA settings? The RAID needs to be disabled, and SATA needs to be set to something like 'emulate IDE'.

Harry.

 

Hi Harry,
there wasn't anything like' emulate ide' in the bios.
However I got it to work. What I had to do was make a new floppy with the SATA drivers on, after I'd removed the old '98' drive. Then reinstalled, said yes and no in the right places and hey presto it worked. SATA drive still doesn't show up in the bios though it is now drive C. When I plugged the old 98 drive back in, it came back with the boot menu again, so I've simply copied over all the files and I'll remiove that drive for good. It was only an old 2Gb dive anyway.
Thanks for help. Thunderbird

 

thunderbird,

What exact make and model motherboard do you have?

 

It's a ASROCK SKT-A K7VT4A PRO

 

Having looked at the manual for the board the SATA options look a bit thin compared to many others I've seen.

I've not been able to see the SATA BIOS info, as that is on the CD and seems not to be vailable from Asrock.

However - other statements on their site seem to suggest that if you have both SATA and standard IDE drives connected then the BIOS should change to allow a specific boot order.

Harry.

 

One thing I didn't try was setting the raid. as it all seemed to be working OK, I didn't want to mess it up. When it says 'Press Tab key to enter Raid settings' (or something like that) before it starts up XP. This then takes us to an area which was mostly greyed out before. Maybe now it will let me make some adjustments and solve this. I'll have a look as soon as I get home. Otherwise I guess I'll have to go through every page on the CD to find the correct info, which I'm assuming must be there.
thunderbird

 

*Normaly* the raid system should be off. But that is on motherboards that have rather more control over the SATA system than this one does.

Don't switch RAID on, or your OS won't boot!

Without seeing the docs on this one I don't know what is in the RAID BIOS.

Harry.

 

OK Harry, I'll go through the CD and see if there's anything there and let you know.
Thunderbird