Problems with SATA and A8N-SLI

  • Thread starter Thread starter Claus Nielsen
  • Start date Start date
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Claus Nielsen

Hi there

I'm using a A8N-SLI Premium and I want to install Windows 2000. I have
1 IDE drive and 2 SATA drives.

BIOS can detect all 3 drives. But when it comes to the installation of
Windows, only the IDE drive shows up. Even though I have previously
pressed F6 and loaded the nVidia SATA drviers from a floppy disc...

So now I have Windows 2000 (SP4) on my IDE drive, but I still can't
see the SATA drives.

The same setup worked flawless on my old system, but I installed that
so long ago, that I have forgotten any tricks I might have used at
that time.

Regards
Claus
 
Claus said:
Hi there

I'm using a A8N-SLI Premium and I want to install Windows 2000. I have
1 IDE drive and 2 SATA drives.

BIOS can detect all 3 drives. But when it comes to the installation of
Windows, only the IDE drive shows up. Even though I have previously
pressed F6 and loaded the nVidia SATA drviers from a floppy disc...

So now I have Windows 2000 (SP4) on my IDE drive, but I still can't
see the SATA drives.

The same setup worked flawless on my old system, but I installed that
so long ago, that I have forgotten any tricks I might have used at
that time.
Click to expand...

What SATA connectors are you using, the regular SATA ones or the
SATA_RAID ones? For the NVIDIA controller they should be on the regular
SATA ports.
 
You probably have the SATA drives connected to the onboard Silicon Image
ports, not the NVIDIA ports. The NVIDIA ports are the 4 SATA ports furthest
away from the PCI slots and are black in color. The Silicon Image ports are
to the left of these and are red. I believe that the default BIOS behavior
is to natively support the NVIDIA ports in BASE (non-RAID) without the need
of F6 drivers. The Silicon Image ports need to be enabled as SATA RAID in
the BIOS, and then F6 drivers for them need to be introduced during Windows
installation. Hope this helps.
 
Also check to make sure that the SATA drive is the boot drive in the
Bios. I had the same thing.
 
You probably have the SATA drives connected to the onboard Silicon Image
ports, not the NVIDIA ports. The NVIDIA ports are the 4 SATA ports furthest
away from the PCI slots and are black in color. The Silicon Image ports are
to the left of these and are red. I believe that the default BIOS behavior
is to natively support the NVIDIA ports in BASE (non-RAID) without the need
of F6 drivers. The Silicon Image ports need to be enabled as SATA RAID in
the BIOS, and then F6 drivers for them need to be introduced during Windows
installation. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

That's correct, but even before running XP setup and loading the
drivers with the F6 interrupt, one would have to have the nVidia RAID
controller enabled in BIOS and actually create the array. I'm
guessing that it's failure to create the array that prevents the
drives from showing up in Windows.

If Original Poster wishes to install XP on one of the SATA drives
withOUT creating a RAID setup, he should connect the SATA drives to
the nVidia connectors and NOT load any drivers during XP installation.
In this scenario, both RAID controllers should be disabled in BIOS
before starting.

We need more facts from OP about what he's trying to do.

Ron
 
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