[Machiavelli]

I just purchased 1 new 36 gig raptor for my DFI Infinity system and I could use some help getting it all set up. I have never used a sata HD before. I used the sata cable that comes with the mobo and plugged it into the "sata 1" slot on the board. I looked at the jumper diagram on the hd and couldnt make sense of it . I left the jumper as default. It sees the raptor before it gets to windows and allows me to push f4 for a raid but windows doesnt recognize the drive. Do I need to adjust settings in bios or install drivers?
Any help would be appreciated.

Thank You

[Ramlaen]

If you are running windows xp or windows 2000, more than likely you will have to partition/format/add the drive, under the disk managment service, in control panel under administrative tools... have you checked there for the drive?

[Machiavelli]

I am running xp, I checked the disk management service and it only shows my ide drive and not the Raptor. The only place i can seem to get the drive to show up is on the post. I'll keep messing with it but more suggestions are appreacited.

Thank you for the help Ramlaen

[Boomstick]

Originally posted by Machiavelli
I just purchased 1 new raptor... push f4 for a raid

You need at least 2 HDDs for a RAID. Preferably of the same size/type.
Is your IBM a PATA/IDE HDD? You might need to enable SATA in the BIOS.

[blackhabit]

there is a good utility that i found( i dont remeber but i think seagate is where i downloaded it from, you can google it) that let you setup normal ide and sata drives within windows without installing a os on the drive, it works great.

[Machiavelli]

I cant find the Raptor in bios or windows. The only place is shows up is in the raid utility. I was able to format if from the utility but that doesnt really change anything until i am able to recognize it at least in bios. I enabled sata in bios. Could it be something on the jumpers? I think i have a seagate utility on a cd from another HD thx blackhabit.

Thanks for all the suggestions

[Machiavelli]

Hmm my motherboard came with sata raid drivers on a diskette, maybe I need to installed the driver just to get a single sata drive to work

[I.M.O.G.]

You don't need 2 drives to put a drive into a raid array. It won't really be a raid array, but you can assign a single drive to an array.

To set up my raptor, I had to enter the bios for my PCI controller and define an array and assign the drive to it. Then I could see it within windows and partition and format it.

First thing you should do is remove the jumper from the drive altogether. With the raptor HDD's they are not necessary at all - I looked into there documentation when I set mine up and I am sure of this. I would store the jumper someplace where you will find it later though, it is always good to have spares for something small and easy to lose like that.

Next, make sure the drive is connected to the primary channel - this may or may not matter, but if the hardware wants to be picky it is best to connect it to the primary channel. What numbers are the sata connectors, do they start at 0 or 1?

Then you need to enter the settings for your SATA controller... I am not familiar with onboard sata controllers so you will have to look in your mobo manual or peruse your mobo bios and find the settings to configure an array. You need to create an array and add the drive to it; selecting 16k for the stripe is best.

Upon boot into windows, press windows+r and type diskmgmt.msc then hit enter.

You should see the drive and be able to create a partition on it, then format it, then use it!

EDIT: Also press windows+r and type devmgmt.msc then hit enter.

In device manager, right click on your sata hardware and hit properties. Update its drivers but do not search for them - select the location for windows to look in and point it to your A: drive with the floppy drivers in there. If you get any warnings that pop up while installing the drivers choose to continue.

AFAIK, the basic problem you have right now is that you do not have an array for the drive to reside in. You may also need to have those drivers installed to get it to work once have the array defined. If I am wrong on this and this isn't necessary I apologize, but it is what I did and how I got things to work, and how I have gotten someone else to get their drive to work also.

[Machiavelli]

Awesome advice and detial Imog. Thank you for taking the time to do a good turn. I followed the mentioned steps and I think i got it figured out thanks to everyones help.

Thank You!

[I.M.O.G.]

Actually, you would be better off to change the size of your stripe to 64k or 128k. This will give you slightly better overall performance than 16k, and if you have already configured your stripe size, it can be changed by some downloadable programs like partitionmagic and similar ones.