Another, but different SATA Question

[stiltman]

does the drive show up in device manager?

[DB83]

Does it show up under 'Device Manager' ?

Did you have a 'found new hardware' notification ?

[Lucifers_Ghost]

Oops, sorry. I should have mentioned that. Im just getting frustrated.

No, its not showing up in the device manager. No new hardware notification.

[DB83]

You could try the 'Add New Hardware' wizzard.

I still think that somewhere you need that driver from the floppy to allow windows to see the drive. It may be called a RAID driver but the controller has a dual function.

I have had two SATA MBs. Unfortunately, I do not remeber the exact sequence now but the first drive was definately not showing anywhere until I installed the driver from the floppy.

With the 2nd MB the driver was installed straight from the CD - it was actually called an IDE driver - but was still required for the drives to show even though the drives showed up in POST.

[Billf2099]

I'll ask the really stupid question. Is the drive formatted yet? If not, its not a 'drive'. It will show up in POST, but that's it. Windows does not recognize unformatted drives as drives. There should be formatted software that came with the drive. Usually you boot to that software and format the drive appropriately.

[Lucifers_Ghost]

You could try the 'Add New Hardware' wizzard.

I still think that somewhere you need that driver from the floppy to allow windows to see the drive. It may be called a RAID driver but the controller has a dual function.

I have had two SATA MBs. Unfortunately, I do not remeber the exact sequence now but the first drive was definately not showing anywhere until I installed the driver from the floppy.

With the 2nd MB the driver was installed straight from the CD - it was actually called an IDE driver - but was still required for the drives to show even though the drives showed up in POST.

I will try the add new hardware wizard tonight.

I have a floppy/cd of drivers for the sata drive and I have installed them already as well. Still, no dice.

[Lucifers_Ghost]

I'll ask the really stupid question. Is the drive formatted yet? If not, its not a 'drive'. It will show up in POST, but that's it. Windows does not recognize unformatted drives as drives. There should be formatted software that came with the drive. Usually you boot to that software and format the drive appropriately.

Every other time I have purchased a drive (albeit, they were IDE), after installing them (unformatted), they showed up in the Disk Management section. None of the drives I have purchased in the last 3 years (all Western Digitals) has come with any software, formatting or otherwise.

Unless sata drives are a different monster, I have assumed (up until this post anyway), that installing and formatting them would generally be the same (outside of bios settings and such).

[Krispy Kritter]

The same applies to SATA drives as it does for IDE drives. The drive should appear in Disk Management. You then have the option of partitioning and formatting the drive.

[DB83]

I'll ask the really stupid question. Is the drive formatted yet? If not, its not a 'drive'. It will show up in POST, but that's it. Windows does not recognize unformatted drives as drives. There should be formatted software that came with the drive. Usually you boot to that software and format the drive appropriately.

But XP does show up an un-allocated partition.

Chicken & Egg scenario. Partition > Drive Letter > Format

At the moment the OP is not even at first base.

I know what 'software' you refer to. Does not usually come with OEM drives but could be downloaded from the manufacturers web-site. But it should not be neccessary - quite often it's just for diagnostic purposes or basic copying - the formatting part was usually done with the basic (preXP) DOS utilities. The OP already has all the tools he needs. It's called Windows XP.

Here's another suggestion. Boot into the XP installation CD and try to install a fresh copy of Windows on another drive. If you only have two drives then the 2nd disk would show up as Disk1. The installation will partition the drive as you ask and will format it. Once the format is complete you may be able to abort the actual installation.

[Krispy Kritter]

From the information I can find on this board (can't find the manual), it could just be a driver issue at this point. Since it is a MSI board, you can use the LiveUpdate software package (should be on the MB CD). It will verify all of your MB software and drivers are update, if they aren't it can download and install them.

[DB83]

From the manual :


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[Lucifers_Ghost]

Mr. Kritter gets the award.

Apparantly, it was an out of date driver issue. I would have thought that the drivers that CAME with the MB were good but obviously not. Did the live update, new drivers, reboot, it was there in disk management. Formatted (as if you lose 22gb :P). Rebooted again from CD, attempted to install windows but it crashed. Which has happened before as I have a couple of scratches on my XP disk. sometimes it takes 3 or 4 attempts to make it all the way through. So, we shall see

[DB83]

Glad to hear that you are now on a 'home run'

Can I now ask a stoopid question. Why are you installing Windows on that drive ? You will end with a dual-boot system and possible problems if you delete windows from the existing drive.

[Lucifers_Ghost]

Glad to hear that you are now on a 'home run'

Can I now ask a stoopid question. Why are you installing Windows on that drive ? You will end with a dual-boot system and possible problems if you delete windows from the existing drive.

Well Kritter hit the home run. I just ran the bases for him :P

I have two computers, 4 drives. A 10gb, an 80gb, a 120gb (all ide) and my 320gb sata.

After asked that question, I gave it a good think over. Im not sure what to do anymore.

My "faster" computer will have the sata and the 120gb. Should I put windows/programs on the IDE drive and use the sata for storage, personal files, dumping converted video files, etc, etc. Or vise versa?

The other PC will have the 10gb with windows/proggies and the 80gb for whatever else. This one will mainly be used when the other pc is tied up.

[DB83]

Well that is what I do.

Windows and programs are on an IDE.

My main computer use is Video capture, editing and dvd creation. All the files are stored and managed on two SATA drives.

[Billf2099]

Ghost,
WD's software is called Data Lifeguard. I imagine if you bought bare drives instead of boxed one's you wouldn't get the 'software'. I never use the software anyway. I format my drives with windows after booting on the Installation CD. Keeps conflicts to a minimum that way.

I've never put an unformatted drive into an XP computer, so can't speak to how windows would handle that. I know on earlier versions of windows you were SOL, it might see the drive, but might not.

As for dual booting. I kept my original IDE drive running Windows 2000 and installed my new SATA with Windows XP. XP is the default boot drive.
AFter a couple years of thrashing that Win2000 drive I felt it was best if it was used as a server drive for files rather then a lot of I/O. As long as you keep boot order you probably would be OK if you had XP on that other drive, but... why complicate things.

[TooLFooL]

windows will run faster off the sata drive