Installing a SATA drive - help

[Juleswc]

Hi,

I'm running XP Home with a Gigabyte 7VAXP Ultra motherboard.
I've got a 80gb IDE HDD installed which is running XP etc, however I've just bought a 250gb Sata Drive for the motherboard which I'd like to install.

I've attached Sata cables etc and when I press F4 on start up for Sata/raid it shows the drive, but how can I get XP to recognise the drive and start to use it?? any advice?

Thanks in Advance

Cheers

Jules

 

[kjv1611]

In order to get Windows to recognize the hard drive, especially with that MOBO - it has the same chipset as my Gigabyte 7NNXP, I believe - You need ot press F6, not F4, during Windows setup - there will be a prompt at the bottom of the screen.

But before that, you need to download the SATA drivers from Gigabyte's website for your motherboard, and put them on a floppy. When you download the drivers, they actually have a version that is an executable file which puts the correct files in the correct location(s) on your floppy drive. If your PC doesn't have a floppy, I'm not terribly sure how you can handle that.

One other option, which I am about to try: If you were to purchase an ADD-ON SATA RAID card to connect your SATA drive to, there are some with driverless booting! That means no pressing F6! The one I am going to use is by PNY, and they are on sale REALLY cheap right now on NewEgg.

A 3 SATA connection card is running $25, and a 5 connection SATA card is running $39, assuming they've not discontinued the sale yet.

Here are the 2 cards I'm talking about:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cription=pny+sata+raid&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all

I've not tried them out yet, but will probably be doing so within a week or two, as my cards and new drives will be delivered today, it seems.

The cards got good reviews, and one thing that was pointed out by one reviewer was that he was excited when he did not have to do the whole F6 routine to install the SATA drivers. The cards are dedicated RAID cards which means you should get better RAID performance out of them than the onboard connectors, assuming you wanted to go that route - which doesn't sound like is the case at this point.


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Juleswc]

Hi,
Thanks for the prompt reply and helpful information.
It sounds something I may consider, I'll have a look into that.

Now I may be acting thick, (quite possible LOL) I've downloaded the drivers from the Gigabyte site and put on floppy etc, however I reboot and press f6 and nothing happens.... any ideas?

Cheers
Jules

 

[kjv1611]

You have to hit F6 when Windows prompts for it. It comes up fairly quick, and if you don't hit it at the right time, it won't take. I have missed it before, b/c I was looking at something else when that came up.

Another thing to consider is to make sure that your BIOS settings have your SATA connection not set to any RAID configuration, since you only have one disk for that purpose.

And, another thing you should consider. If your board is the same as mine with the SATA connections, they are run through the PCI bus. Therefore, you won't really get any advantage from a SATA drive over an IDE drive. I read a couple reports online where people tested IDE and SATA with my board, and got slightly better results with the IDE hard drive.

So, if you wanted to go that route, I'd use the IDE drive for Windows and program files, and just use the SATA drive for files and such. You can map your "My Documents" to the extra hard drive, whatever letter it ends up being. Then, you wouldn't have to worry about loading the drivers, I think, from the floppy, b/c Windows would start recognizing the drive most likley, after installation of Windows is complete, and load the correct drivers from within Windows. If not, you could then just load the drivers that don't go on the floppy from the Gigabyte website.

This would alleviate purchasing anything extra at all.

I have used both IDE and SATA drives with my board as single boot drives, and I even once tried a RAID0 setup with 2 SATA drives. However, I never saw any performance gain with the SATA drives. This is probably due to the routing of things on the motherboard. Some of the newer boards would have different results, as they have the SATA drives routed more directly, I believe.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[wolluf]

If you've got XP installed and this SATA drive is just additional filestore, you DON'T need to run an XP install (which is where you press F6). Normally, XP should just recognise it anyway - have you gone into disk management (run diskmgmt.msc) and partitioned/formatted it (you won't see it in explorer otherwise). If XP really can't see it, install the SATA drivers for the motherboard (the ones for installing within windows, not the ones which go on the floppy to be used with install CD).

 

[wahnula]

All of what wolluf said is quite correct. Not familiar with that MB but my 2002 Asus P4S8X requires me to configure any new drive is BIOS as a one-drive RAID array to allow access to the drive. Press whatever RAID prompt you are encountering in BIOS (if any) and add the drive to create a NEW array. While you are in BIOS make sure SATA is enabled. You may also need to enable RAID to get the SATA ports to see the drive.

Modern MBs don't need this treatment so it may be superfluous.

Tony

 

[Juleswc]

Thanks Guys
All correct and working - thanks so much for your superb advice.

Cheers

Jules