Help needed on SATA dirve issue please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy Rose
  • Start date Start date
A

Andy Rose

Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said the
was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while, I
put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there. *sigh*
I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.

Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
supplied upon request.

Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is it
much better than IDE?!?

hmmm, *oh, dear*.......

thanx - andy
 
Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said the
was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while, I
put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there. *sigh*
I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.

Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
supplied upon request.

Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is it
much better than IDE?!?

hmmm, *oh, dear*.......

thanx - andy
Click to expand...

Sata is certainly worth using... single or otherwise.

AFA the Sata drive not being detected, it may be worth setting the option under
PNP in your bios settings to show you are using a PNP system.

I have a ASUS K8V SE D/L board which would not show any connected Sata drives.

However, the Sata drives would be detected if I changed the default NO setting
to YES. This is under the PNP/IRQ settings in the bios.... usually the first
option.

I changed it to YES and all was okay.... very strange I know but it resolved my
problem.... obviously a resource conflict of some sort.
May not work for you but worth a try!

Regards

John
 
Andy Rose said:
Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said the
was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while, I
put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there. *sigh*
I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.

Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
supplied upon request.

Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is it
much better than IDE?!?

hmmm, *oh, dear*.......

thanx - andy
Click to expand...
Andy,

First read your manual that came with your motherboard and you will see on
page 2-21 and chapter 5 that you will have to install software drivers for
your SATA controller.

Larry
 
in order to use the SATA drive as your boot drive..if you are using XP you
need to reformat and load the drivers for it when prompted...also did you
enable SATA on the M/B by moving the jumper to enable position?..I know the
A7N8X-Deluxe has a jumper..not sure about the E model though
 
dino said:
in order to use the SATA drive as your boot drive..if you are using XP you
need to reformat and load the drivers for it when prompted...also did you
enable SATA on the M/B by moving the jumper to enable position?..I know the
A7N8X-Deluxe has a jumper..not sure about the E model though
Click to expand...

An alternative is to load the drivers from your "old" drive via Device
Manager, then clone the old drive to your new SATA drive, using a program
like Ghost or Drive Image.

Although a fresh install is the better option, I use the cloning method
myself. In fact, I shall probably do it this afternoon, I have just
received a new SATA drive.
 
Doesnt matter whether you clone or not. If you dont install the sata drivers
it wont detect.
If changing hd you will have to repair the o/s installation, using the F6
option to load the sata drivers from floppy.
Same applies for a clean install.
 
help.

Thank you very much for your responses so far. Sadly, it still isn't
working.
I've checked the jumper settings. SATA support is on by default. The drive
is mouted in the bay and connected to power as well as to the onboard SATA
connector.
I've also checked the PNP settings, there is no Y or N setting. It's set to
auto at the moment.
I also have booted of the XP cd and tried to install. I don't know where to
supply the drivers from. There is a SATA driver download on the net, but
it's over 4 mb, so I don't think that's what I need.
I also flashed the bios to 1.008 version, the newest offered on asuscom.de.
Reading the manual, (which I did already once), didn't help me much. (???)

So here's the situation :

- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe MoBo
Bios ver. 1.008
- Hitachi SATA HD 164 gb, bulk 'as it came'
non formated
- LiteOnDVD Burner on Sec. Slave IDE
- Floppydisk
- No OS installes
- No other HD installed

Please, how to get do I create a drivers disk - where to get the files. How
do I install the single HD?

I'm quite desperate about this, as I've spent over 4 nights on this matter
and really need some sleep.
(aaaargrgrhhhhh..... )


best regards,

Andy r.
 
help.

Thank you very much for your responses so far. Sadly, it still isn't
working.
I've checked the jumper settings. SATA support is on by default. The drive
is mouted in the bay and connected to power as well as to the onboard SATA
connector.
I've also checked the PNP settings, there is no Y or N setting. It's set to
auto at the moment.
I also have booted of the XP cd and tried to install. I don't know where to
supply the drivers from. There is a SATA driver download on the net, but
it's over 4 mb, so I don't think that's what I need.
I also flashed the bios to 1.008 version, the newest offered on asuscom.de.
Reading the manual, (which I did already once), didn't help me much. (???)

So here's the situation :

- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe MoBo
Bios ver. 1.008
- Hitachi SATA HD 164 gb, bulk 'as it came'
non formated
- LiteOnDVD Burner on Sec. Slave IDE
- Floppydisk
- No OS installes
- No other HD installed

Please, how to get do I create a drivers disk - where to get the files. How
do I install the single HD?

I'm quite desperate about this, as I've spent over 4 nights on this matter
and really need some sleep.
(aaaargrgrhhhhh..... )


best regards,

Andy r.
Click to expand...


Andy... the drivers usually come on the support cd that comes with the
motherboard.

Its normally an executable file which creates a suitable driver floppy which can
be inserted and read by XP by pressing F6 when prompted during the early
installation of XP. No doubt they would be on the Asus site too somewhere.

However, from what I gather from your first posting it sounds like the bios is
throwing up a 'No Hard-drives Found message' if that is correct then no amount
of drivers will help. The Sata drive MUST be recognised by the bios first!

Both Ami and Award bioses both have the option to state whether you are using a
PNP operating system, never known it to have an auto option, its usually Y or N.
Its under the 'PCI/PNP' options. (unless your bios is completely different)
If the bios is failing to see the Sata drive and your bios settings are correct
and all else fails it may be worth lifting out all the cards except your
graphics card just in case there's a clash somewhere.

In my case... it was my Audigy-2 LS which was preventing my Sata from showing
up, the Sata drive showed when I unplugged the sound card, even plugging into a
different pci slot did'nt work for me. AIS changing that option in the bios
fixed it for me... IME that setting usually doesn't seem to matter whether its
set to yes or no normally... The joys of computers.. LOL

1:
Just to clarify again... is the system halting with a bios message saying it
cannot find any hard-drives when first booting.?

2:
Or is it XP that cannot find the drives.?

John
 
John, you seem to be my man. Stay with me now... ;))

here goes:

Nvidia boot agent:

PXE-E61 Media test failiure, check cable
PXE-MOF Exiting Nvidia boot agent
Disk boot failure, insert sytemdisk and....


that's the last I see.


best regards,

andy
 
Ok. As I said - you da man.

I put the Wlan card in when i installed the hd. Now, after removing the wlan
card, presto! At least now the SATA setup too is available.

problem is the menu only offers raid or mirrored - i cant find a single
drive entry. Any ideas?

best regards,

Andy
 
I just built a system on the A7N8X-E deluxe with Win2K, so perhaps
it's a little different than the XP setup, but using F6 during the
install I was easily able to load the SATA drivers (yes, they are on
the ASUS support CD and I transferred those to a floppy via another
machine) and continue the full OS install without a hitch.

The jumpers have to enable SATA, the BIOS needs to tell which drive to
boot to when done, and while SATA isn't a specific choice there are 2
options I found. Enable "boot other device" and it will work, BUT if
you have a secondary drive such as an IDE with an OS (MBR) installed
the system kept trying to boot to that no matter what. However, enable
SCSI as a boot drive (the SATA appears to be seen as SCSI) I boot just
fine onto SATA and can even hang an IDE drive with a complete OS and
not have it boot, just act as a slave drive that I can explore.

This may be getting a bit beyond where you are, it seems you're having
issues with SATA even being seen for the install, right? Follow other
XP guru's advice, as I say I've done only a little with XP, but with
2K it was pretty straight forward.
 
Indeed - but as already posted, I had already loaded the SATA drivers on my
PATA drive before cloning it to SATA drive.
--
Doug Ramage

anon said:
Doesnt matter whether you clone or not. If you dont install the sata drivers
it wont detect.
If changing hd you will have to repair the o/s installation, using the F6
option to load the sata drivers from floppy.
Same applies for a clean install.
Click to expand...
 
Ok - all up and running. Here's the solution:

- SATA setup was not available during bootup. After removing internal Wifi
Card, setup was accessible via F4. Thanx to John for pointing out the
possibility of a hardware conflict - that was the initial key.

- Found a forum on the web where they tell you, how to create a driver disk
for the WinXP installation. (I think I threw mine in the trash, as many
others did b4 they bought a sata drive......).

- Popped in the CD, slammed F6, waited for the boot to finish and supplied
the disk when promoted. Presto! 164gb up and running. ......(Fast,
too.)

Thanx to all of you, for all the help supplied. Wouldn't have made it
without you.
 
Andy Rose said:
Ok. As I said - you da man.

I put the Wlan card in when i installed the hd. Now, after removing the wlan
card, presto! At least now the SATA setup too is available.

problem is the menu only offers raid or mirrored - i cant find a single
drive entry. Any ideas?

best regards,

Andy
Click to expand...

The only single drive option that I remember is for a "low level
format". You needed the driver loaded, but you can just ignore
the Raid options. I have two 10,000RPM WD Raptors one is
smaller than the other and I don't use and Raid functions. Once
the driver is installed, the end of the boot (before you go the
Windows loading part) you should see your SATA drive(s) listed.

Of course you will still have to set an active partition and format
the drive(s).

Luck;
Ken
 
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