SATA Related issues. Please help

[[BTF]Sigma]

Hey there.

I just purchased a new system and I need some help with it. The SATA disk is halting my boot process from continuing.

When turn on the computer with it attached and plugged in the BIOS recognizes it and reports that it is there but then the whole BIOS hangs at that moment. It recognized it when I first booted up and had my XP disc in the drive. XPSETUP ran fine off the CD drive and began to format the new 250gig SATA drive. It completed then asked for a reboot. That's when it stopped working. So until I can get it up and running I am using my 80gig IDE from my previous computer.

SATA drives are new to me and I would really appresciate any help you guys/gals can give.


Oh specs:

Intel Pentium D 3.2ghz
ASUS P5L-MX mobo
1gig DDRM1 RAM
Nvidia 7300GS PCI-E

My e-penis just got bigger!!!

[reaper]

you are not sure if the BIOS is detecting the drive properly; find out, change the options such as autonegotiate.
if this BIOS is not detecting the drive, try the below steps.

check what the motherboard supports, and make sure your drive is appropriate (although evidently it seems supported).  then connect the drive to a different port/channel (if that's possible), and maybe clear the CMOS, or upgrade the BIOS.

if it is detecting the drive properly, then your dealing with windows and the appropriate drivers, search the net, or ask someone; I believe you have to hit a certain key as windows is installing to select RAID drivers, and SATA drivers.

i'm not on top of the PC hardware stuff, but no one responded and this is what I would do.

gl.

[Quest]

Yea, i had some issues getting my sata drive to work as well. 
I had to copy the drivers onto a floppy and then install them at the beginning of the windows installation.  It will prompt you to install drivers for a raid setup (like reaper said).  You really have to watch for it tho, it flashes the option pretty quickly.  So just install your drivers at that point, and hopefully it will solve your problem.

[[BTF]Sigma]

I missed that part b/c I was unsure if I needed it. So the process began and I selected the new drive to accept the install. Partition was formatted to NTFS and after it finished that process was when the problem of it not following through on it's recognition began.

The BIOS detects it but as soon as it tries to use it is where I get the hangup. That's where I get stuck. I cannot enter my BIOS because it hangs just as soon as it detects the new drive. Would I be able to install the new drive after I have loaded into the BIOS settings?

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

Yea, i had some issues getting my sata drive to work as well.
I had to copy the drivers onto a floppy and then install them at the beginning of the windows installation. It will prompt you to install drivers for a raid setup (like reaper said). You really have to watch for it tho, it flashes the option pretty quickly. So just install your drivers at that point, and hopefully it will solve your problem.

What Quest said.
You should be able to get the SATA drivers from your MB Manufactorer
ASUS P5L-MX mobo

[Whirlingdervish]

well, it definitely sounds as if it needs the SATA drivers, so I agree with these guys.

I'm not sure if you can mix and match them (since I haven't had the pleasure of trying yet..) but you could try to put both of the HD's in and boot from the old one.

then install the drivers for the new one while your comp is up and running..

it shouldn't hang up on startup if it's not the boot/master drive.
it might throw an erroror say that it can't recognize it in the BIOS, but it should boot.

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

No you cannot mix and match drivers,Unfortanatly at this time, as far as i'm aware microsoft hasn't made a "standard" driver yet

[[BTF]Sigma]

it shouldn't hang up on startup if it's not the boot/master drive.
it might throw an erroror say that it can't recognize it in the BIOS, but it should boot.

that's exactly what it does. It doesn't even get to the bios config....it tries to recognize the drive and hangs

[[BTF]DeathStalker]

it shouldn't hang up on startup if it's not the boot/master drive.
it might throw an erroror say that it can't recognize it in the BIOS, but it should boot.

that's exactly what it does. It doesn't even get to the bios config....it tries to recognize the drive and hangs

it should not hang before or in BIOS, something may have messed it up to where BIOS can't figure out what it' geometry is

[[BTF]Sigma]

it should not hang before or in BIOS, something may have messed it up to where BIOS can't figure out what it' geometry is

Right as the format process was complete on the new SATA drive, it recognized it without loading the RAID drivers, the program prompted me to restart. Then it just would not complete the recognization process and load into or past the BIOS.

[reaper]

try following the general troubleshooting steps I suggested

you are not sure if the BIOS is detecting the drive properly; find out, change the options such as autonegotiate.
if this BIOS is not detecting the drive, try the below steps.

check what the motherboard supports, and make sure your drive is appropriate (although evidently it seems supported).

[[BTF]Sigma]

try following the general troubleshooting steps I suggested

you are not sure if the BIOS is detecting the drive properly; find out, change the options such as autonegotiate.
if this BIOS is not detecting the drive, try the below steps.

check what the motherboard supports, and make sure your drive is appropriate (although evidently it seems supported).  then connect the drive to a different port/channel (if that's possible), and maybe clear the CMOS, or upgrade the BIOS.

if it is detecting the drive properly, then your dealing with windows and the appropriate drivers, search the net, or ask someone; I believe you have to hit a certain key as windows is installing to select RAID drivers, and SATA drivers.

i want to add - make sure the BIOS options are set correctly.  I believe the BIOS should be configured to detect the SATA drive, and boot from it.  there may be multiple options, such as autonegotiate

I tried those steps. I think I'm just going to take it back and have them set it up. It's one of two things: a defective drive, or a defective mobo

[PANTONE 7717C]

I found this posted somewhere, might be related to your problem as he uses the same mobo.

Quote: "(...) I also got 1 ide to Sata convertor. It's very small and red and no brand. While I got it to work with my Pioneer 105 DVD RW drive it wouldn't boot to do an install. I did get it to work with one of my hard drives. So I have one hard drive set as master & the DVD drive set as slave on the ide bus.
I set the hard drive to master or master single drive. Cable select isn't recommended. I have it plugged into the red #1 SATA port. The black SATA ports are marked slave, it's easy to go wrong with the drive pins. The hard thing to figure out for me was the bios settings. After much fussing I found that default settings most likely would have worked fine and that doing a bios upgrade was mostly for newer Core2 CPU's which I don't have. Here is the bios area where I went wrong and it's a bit tricky.
In your manual it's under 2.3.5 IDE Configuration. Should be set to the default of First line: Enhanced Mode, next line: S-ATA
Any other seting will cause issues for most people as the manual says and it's true. My guess is this is where you went wrong unless the board is defective. I had trouble with this as the setting seems wrong until I read the manual carefully. Best of luck"

Still not very clear but without looking at the bios settings myself I can't really recommend anything. I would probably try booting from CD again first to install the sata drivers from floppy. During the booting from cd hit F6 and install additional drivers. Once the drivers are installed, the installer should recognize your drive and give you the option to format it (again...), and NTFS should be one of the available options. You should be able to cancel the Windows installation after the drive is formatted. After that again boot from the Windows CD to see if it loads or installs any more needed files.

I think I'm just going to take it back and have them set it up.

That's probably the best option I guess. GL.

[[BTF]Sigma]

I found this posted somewhere, might be related to your problem as he uses the same mobo.

Quote: "(...) I also got 1 ide to Sata convertor. It's very small and red and no brand. While I got it to work with my Pioneer 105 DVD RW drive it wouldn't boot to do an install. I did get it to work with one of my hard drives. So I have one hard drive set as master & the DVD drive set as slave on the ide bus.
I set the hard drive to master or master single drive. Cable select isn't recommended. I have it plugged into the red #1 SATA port. The black SATA ports are marked slave, it's easy to go wrong with the drive pins. The hard thing to figure out for me was the bios settings. After much fussing I found that default settings most likely would have worked fine and that doing a bios upgrade was mostly for newer Core2 CPU's which I don't have. Here is the bios area where I went wrong and it's a bit tricky.
In your manual it's under 2.3.5 IDE Configuration. Should be set to the default of First line: Enhanced Mode, next line: S-ATA
Any other seting will cause issues for most people as the manual says and it's true. My guess is this is where you went wrong unless the board is defective. I had trouble with this as the setting seems wrong until I read the manual carefully. Best of luck"

Still not very clear but without looking at the bios settings myself I can't really recommend anything. I would probably try booting from CD again first to install the sata drivers from floppy. During the booting from cd hit F6 and install additional drivers. Once the drivers are installed, the installer should recognize your drive and give you the option to format it (again...), and NTFS should be one of the available options. You should be able to cancel the Windows installation after the drive is formatted. After that again boot from the Windows CD to see if it loads or installs any more needed files.

I think I'm just going to take it back and have them set it up.

That's probably the best option I guess. GL.

Thanks for the reply.

I have loaded the Drivers from the manufacturer a couple days ago. Even after doing that it still froze when the BIOS detected the drive and tried to initiate it after a reboot.

[[BTF]Sigma]

The tech at the shop just gave me a new drive and it works fine. He even tossed in a free genuine copy of XP Pro