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Problem: Drive not coming up in windows setup (SATA)

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FyreDaug

Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Location
Saskatoon, SK
Heres the deal:
Mobo Asus P4S800D-X
P4 3.2
512x2 dual channel pc3200 kingston
Radeon x800 pro
SB Audigy
Some 10/100 nic
2x200gb WD IDE drives
1x160 sata seagate

I recently changed mobos from a p4p800e deluxe, so since ive got a different chipset I have to format. Backed everything important off the sata onto the other 2 drives, and hooked everything back up.

Now when im in the windows install screen the only 2 drives that show up are the WD to format.

However the SATA shows up fine in the bios and its set as the first drive and the second boot sequence. I tried changing the sata plug on the mobo from primary to secondary, but still no luck. Sata is enabled in the bios aswell (hence it detecting it)

Why wont it show up in windows to install on it (or format)?
 
I didnt have to with the old board, and what drivers do I need? I dont recall EVER having to do this for any sata drives before, it would just come up in the installation as being there....
 
you probably have to copy the SATA drivers to a floppy from the CD that came with the motherboard. i had to do that with my current board so i could install winxp to my SATA drive.
 
Some boards need to have drivers manually installed. On my board I have to set it up with the F6. On one board I have worked on no drivers are needed. It just finds them.

The drivers are on the install cd. You will need a floppy to do this. Since it is a Windows limitation.

A link for ASUS, if you don't have an install CD.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us
 
Just an FYI:

I had this kind of trouble, used the floppy, it didin't work. Finally, I unplugged all IDEdevices except for my cdrom, plugged in my sata drive, and installed it that way. If you add the drives later its no biggie, and it seems to work.
 
Windoze is a few years old now, and it's no surprize that newly minted hardware doesn't have drivers in there already.
My DFI floppy says "nvidia raid driver", yet is still needed to recognize any SATA device whether I'm using raid or not (and I am not).
I believe my Asus floppy said Raid/SATA drivers or something like that, and shipped with the mobo.
 
Cheator said:
Just an FYI:

I had this kind of trouble, used the floppy, it didin't work. Finally, I unplugged all IDEdevices except for my cdrom, plugged in my sata drive, and installed it that way. If you add the drives later its no biggie, and it seems to work.

Whenever I install Windows I always have as little as possible hooked up, ESPECIALLY other drives. Less stuff to go wrong. :)
 
Somebody please explain to me how the motherboard has any influence on whether you need to load SATA drivers via a floppy or not. The way I understand it, all the drivers are loaded from the Windows CD, meaning that if your Windows CD doesn't have SATA drivers included (pre-SP2?), you NEED to press F6. How in the heck would a motherboard automatically load SATA drivers into memory when running Windows setup? The Windows CD would have to query the motherboard somehow, and AFAIK, that doesn't happen. This is something I've always been curious about, because I've never known someone who didn't have to load SATA drivers via a floppy. It makes me skeptical of claims I read here on the forum. I always thought this was dependent on whether your Windows CD had the SATA drivers included, and was completely independent of hardware.
 
The F6 forces the drivers. XP will omit any hardware it cannot load generic drivers for. It is done after Windows boots. It is not during the install, hence why most see the drive missing after Windows boots. BIOS can see it just fine. For Windows to see it. The controller drivers must be present.
 
Enablingwolf said:
The F6 forces the drivers. XP will omit any hardware it cannot load generic drivers for. It is done after Windows boots. It is not during the install, hence why most see the drive missing after Windows boots. BIOS can see it just fine. For Windows to see it. The controller drivers must be present.
So if there are no generic SATA drivers on your XP disk, how can a SATA HDD be automatically detected in Windows setup? I don't understand what some people are saying about "drivers being imbedded in the hardware, so a floppy is not needed". How can the hardware force Windows setup to load the necessary drivers? The way I understand it, the ONLY way to avoid having to use a floppy to load SATA drivers (regardless of your motherboard) is to make an XP CD with the necessary drivers included.
 
KillrBuckeye said:
So if there are no generic SATA drivers on your XP disk, how can a SATA HDD be automatically detected in Windows setup? I don't understand what some people are saying about "drivers being imbedded in the hardware, so a floppy is not needed". How can the hardware force Windows setup to load the necessary drivers? The way I understand it, the ONLY way to avoid having to use a floppy to load SATA drivers (regardless of your motherboard) is to make an XP CD with the necessary drivers included.


There are drivers included on the windows CD that will work with a handful of the SATA chipsets out there. For the most part you have to press F6 when prompted by the install to setup additional drivers.

J.
 
juliendogg said:
There are drivers included on the windows CD that will work with a handful of the SATA chipsets out there. For the most part you have to press F6 when prompted by the install to setup additional drivers.

J.
Ah, okay that makes sense. Thanks!
 
Most disks out ther eanywway are only for RAID. Not for SATA. SATA raid, PATA raid, but not SATA alone. At first, with my MSI neo2 plat, I needed the disk. And for about 5 or 6 tries I used the F6 thing in windows and it STILL would not see my SATA drive. After that I realized the disk said "Raid Drivers".

I don't have the specifics, but since it is built into the chipset, a driver disk is not needed. its imbeded, probably taken care of by the BIOS.

I figured out that my neo2 plat treated my sata drives as just normal drives, but tertiary master and lsave, and 4th master and slave. I then concluded that I needed to get rid of the all the drives before my sata drives, since windows doesn't like installing on much more than the primary slave and master, if something else is plugged in.
 
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