OT: SATA Drive installation

goshep wrote on 7/31/2004, 7:28 PM

I just purchased a WD 250 gig SATA driive for capture. I'm currently using a Seagate Barracuda 40 gig ata100 drive on IDE1 for my OS. I've installed the WD and enabled SATA (auto) in bios but it still is not recognized. I have no experience with SATA. Is there a compatibility issue with the IDE channel or something? WD's troubleshooting section was less than helpful. The SATA cable supplies both power AND data correct? I have the old power connector unplugged.

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/31/2004, 8:41 PM

> The SATA cable supplies both power AND data correct? I have the old power connector unplugged

No, the SATA cable only supplies data. There is a separate power cable, which has a much smaller connector but its still a separate cable. This is probably why the drive is not being seen. (i.e., its not powered up). If your drive has the old style power connectors then I would plug it in. If it only has the new ones and your power supply doesn’t have SATA power connectors then you need to buy a power adaptor.

~jr

BillyBoy wrote on 7/31/2004, 9:30 PM

Does you MB support the SATA drive? AFAIK There either has to be a seperate controller chip on your mother board or an external card.

goshep wrote on 7/31/2004, 10:01 PM

Yah. I have it plugged into the onboard SATA controller. Jumpers are set to factory default per manual. Bios is set to SATA enabled (auto). I checked the SATA cable and it does have two connections (one for data and one for power.) The manual says not to connect the old power so I've left that off. I did try it with it briefly but no change. I'm gonna scour the WD website again. This is uncharted water for me. I assume it's normal for bios to not detect it as an IDE drive? My techno-buddy is unavailable right now or I'd ask him for assistance. I better have a beer before I continue.....

John_Cline wrote on 7/31/2004, 10:43 PM

I better have a beer before I continue.....

This is rarely a good idea.

John

amendegw wrote on 8/1/2004, 4:34 AM

I don't know whether this is your problem, but I just went thru this exercise & here's a handy reference:

amendegw wrote on 8/1/2004, 4:46 AM

Whoops! Let's try this again. My HTML is rusty.

Click Here

...Jerry

JJKizak wrote on 8/1/2004, 5:39 AM

Gop to the Intel site and look at the install instructions. Are you forgetting to access the boot up post install of the Sata drive?

JJK

goshep wrote on 8/1/2004, 9:02 AM

"Are you forgetting to access the boot up post install of the Sata drive?

JJK"

Not sure what you mean by this. I'm fairly confident I've eliminated the more obvious problems (i.e. power connections, tried both SATA ports, tried new cables, enabled in BIOS, tried SATA only) but if there is a process that is specific to SATA drives, you'll have to spell it out for me. I assumed this would be as simple as installing an IDE drive. I guess that's what I get for assuming. Hmmm.

JJKizak wrote on 8/1/2004, 10:35 AM

During post -up press CTRL-I to get you into the Raid setup then follow instructions. If you can't get into the setup then your raid driver is not installed. Everybody is using the Intel Driver and they have instructions on their website. www.intel.com.

JJK

rmack350 wrote on 8/1/2004, 4:14 PM

He's got one and only one SATA drive. It's not a RAID array.

It's not this hard. SATA has two cables to connect: Data and power. The power cable usually is an adapter that connects to a 4 pin molex on the PSU.

Leave the case open and the drive loose. turn on the system and listen or even toch the SATA drive. Is it spinning? If yes, go into BIOS and see if the drive is detected and listed correctly. (Yes, it should show up in post but sometimes it goes by pretty fast so go into BIOS and take your time)

If it's spinning and detected correctly then you probably need to partition and format it. Use Windows help for instructions.

Rob Mack

Flack wrote on 8/1/2004, 5:06 PM

If you are installing a Sata drive with XP you must install the Sata drivers before you install XP on a clean system. If you are installing Sata drives when XP is already on your system then you need to install the drivers through disk management.

flack ...

Galeng wrote on 8/2/2004, 11:20 AM

When you first enabled the SATA controller in the BIOS did XP recognize new hardware and try to install drivers?? Look in your device manager and see if the controller is listed there.

Second, right click on my computer, click on manage, then disk managment. Check and see if the drive is listed on the right side. If so, you need to install a partition on it, then format it, etc. Do this by right clicking on it and left clicking on properties. Follow the prompts.

I use RAID 1 SATA drives, but process should be the same.

Good luck.

KjipRecords wrote on 8/3/2004, 4:43 AM

Hi,

I recently bought a SATA PCI card and a WD 200GB SATA disk.
I had the same problem with the disk not being recognised. I got all the latest drivers, checked that everything was seated (power, pci slot, etc.)... no luck.
Did a lot of searching... and found the solution on the www.amdmb.com storage forum.
I have a lot of daisy chained power connections to disks, DVD's and all the other components requiring power. I had put my SATA drive last on a chain.
When I reorganised so that SATA was the first to get power, voila, 200GB of disk available.

HTH,

Lars

goshep wrote on 8/3/2004, 5:19 PM

AGGGGGGGGGG *Banging head on wall*

Well I've tried everything you've all suggested. I've downloaded the "post install" drivers that are suppoed to work with my chipset but when I try to install, I get an incompatibility error. I was gonna try to re-install windows XP and use the "f6 driver" before the main windows install but I think it is the same version as the post install. I'm running the Intel 865PE chipset with the 82801EB/ER I/O. If anyone thniks they have a link to my specific driver, I'd appreciate it. As of now, the one thing I DO know is I DON'T have the drivers installed and I've been all over the Intel site as well as the MOBO site.
Just a quick recap:
SATA is set to auto in BIOS. Drive has never once sounded or felt like it was spinning up during boot. BIOS has never recognized it nor has disk management. There are no SATA, SCSI or RAID controllers listed in hardware. I've tried two different cables and both SATA ports on the MOBO. I've confirmed through bench test at place of purchase that the drive is NOT faulty.
This is my last post on the topic as I think I've polluted the forum enough with my off-topic confusion. I'll keep plugging away and I'll keep my eye on this thread for any new advice/links. Thanks all, as usual, for the advice.

farss wrote on 8/3/2004, 5:31 PM

If the drive is NOT spinning up then everything else is just a waste of time!
You need to address that first and foremost.
Try unplugging a power connector that goes to a drive that does spin up and see if using that you can get the drive to spin.
If no luck there you may have a dodgy power supply. Beg borrow or steal a multimeter. Check volts between either middle pin and outer pins. One should read 5V and the other 12V. Tolerance on both of these is about +/- 0.25 on the 5 V and +/- 0.50 on the 12 V. Some drives are very sensitive about their 12 V supply.

Hope this helps.

Bob.