goldenfleece Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 Just bought a "barebones" 2.8 Celeron PC with 1GB DDR RAM, all I needed to do was add a hard disk and a DVD ROM. When I tried to install the new SATA Seagate Barracuda 160GB drive, it was not recognized by the PC at all. Everything was on auto detect but no joy....the mainboard has 2 SATA slots, plus twin Sata power adaptors already in place. SATA is ENABLED in the BIOS. Tried a quite elderly old style IDE drive and it detected that fine, so doesnt seem to be major problem with the board, and it found the DVD drive easily enough as well. SATA Drive powers up fine, but not showing in the list of primary and secondary masters/slaves, etc.....Only 2 jumper settings on the disk itself and both give the same result....ZERO... Drive tested in other PC and detected immediately, so its an issue with this new PC I have, and not the hard disk itself. New PC has a PM8M3-V mainboard with a VIA P4M800 chipset. Any ideas before I take it down to a PC shop to see if they can get the drive installed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steev Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 Yes, put the SATA drivers on a floppy disk, & almost immediately when you boot from the XP CD it will say "press F5 (I think) to specify additional drivers" or words to that effect. Hit the button, & point it towards the floppy when it asks. You may have to read the instructions on the motherboard CD, there may be more than 1 sort of drivers, & it may either just ask you to copy them, or it may make a driver floppy for you. Later motherboards seem to see the SATA drives as extra IDE ones if you want, but the Via 800 chipset apparently doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenfleece Posted September 13, 2006 Author Share Posted September 13, 2006 Yes tried that, there was a floopy disk with RAID drivers on which has done the trick....many thanks....seems very complicated way of installing a hard drive to me.....oh and was F6 key during Windows Xp set up from the CD........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghozer Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 I rememer this on old XP home/Pro - Pre Service pack 1, my Version of Windows XP is Service Pack 2 from the go, and I dont need a driver disk for the SATA, it finds and uses it straight off.. i'd suggest getting hold of a copy (which is legal providing you have an original KEY) and using that for future installations.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenfleece Posted September 13, 2006 Author Share Posted September 13, 2006 I was using XP Sp2.......set-up told me the driver on the floppy was a better version to use.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chimaera Posted September 14, 2006 Share Posted September 14, 2006 Basically its a configuration thing - in the BIOS of most computers it's possible to spoof the computer so to Windows the SATA drive appears as a PATA one (the standard for god knows how long). This has a cost of performance and stability though. The way you've done it is the 'correct' way - means the hardware is set up natively so everything should work better. As for drivers - Ghozer was probably lucky and had one of the tiny subset of SATA controllers that are supported natively by XP SP2 - the majority of them are not - hence why you found it easier to set up using the floppy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenfleece Posted September 14, 2006 Author Share Posted September 14, 2006 My other new PC was fine with it, but that had a much better mainboard....the SATA drive showed up fine in the boot up sequence, even though I bought the machine with no op system installed.....I think for everyday people without a lot of experience turning on their machine to find no hard drive showing up would be a nightmare.....this barebones PC I bought had NO instructions about how to use the floppy RAID driver disk that came with it....not obvious at all as all it says on the label is RAID DRIVER. Documentation for this sort of motherboard could be much better for novices expecting to see their drives show up immediately like the old style did..... the first thing that occured to me was check the master/slave jumper settings, as normally old style disks have several combinations and a pair of jumpers......so if you never had a SATA disk before and had to install one on a brand new PC with no op system on, and no native SATA support without a driver disk, its not obvious...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GabbleRatcht Posted September 14, 2006 Share Posted September 14, 2006 I built a RAID 1 SATA machine, 2 mirrored drives, from scratch. I know what you mean. Easy when you know how, but then again, isn't everything Problem is not many people put in floppy drives nowadays Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goldenfleece Posted September 14, 2006 Author Share Posted September 14, 2006 Another problem was the barebones PC did not have a floppy drive installed either....it had everything EXCEPT a hard disk, floppy drive and CD rom......and yet they include a floppy RAID disk with the PC.......lucky I have some old machines to ransack for parts...... I mean what does it take to include a simple sheet with some install guide for adding a SATA drive and using the floppy boot disk to install relevant Sata drivers........cost nothing really.......but I assume anyone buying a barebones PC and obviously installing own bits would know this I suppose...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GabbleRatcht Posted September 14, 2006 Share Posted September 14, 2006 I always build with a floppy. If all else fails........Win98 boot disk Edit: BTW my BIOS had to be set to see 'SCSI' to boot before the IDE Drives. The system sees the controller as a SCSI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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