SATA issues, Help please!

i have a major issue. I built a PC 6 months ago and have had my share of problems with it. A week ago i purchased a Western Digital 320 GB SATA 150 7200RPM. I already have an IDE 160 GB HD and i want to use a migration kit to copy over my data from the IDE to the SATA and make the SATA my primary. I have worked for hours on it. Trying to connect the hard drive to my motherboard and then getting XP to recognize it. XP did not detect it. So i went into the BIOS and realized i had Serial ATA Controller off and when i enabled it i then enabled the port that i had it plugged into. When i rebooted, XP detected it as a RAID controller and kept asking for a ULi driver. i dowloaded the ULi driver from the MoBo site and i can't for the life of me get the windows disk manager to detect the SATA drive and can't format, partition or anything. I seriuosly can't do anything. My Mother board is the A480A7 edition of TUL motherboards. I am SO lost. i have read many threads from many forums of other ppl with similar problems but i can't, in my BIOS, turn "off" RAID controllers w/o turning off my SATA ports. I only have one drive, why is it forcing me to form a RAID? This can't be happening. Is there something i need to dowload or what? Please help. If anyone has any ideas, either reply here or email me at <removed> If you have skype and want to walk me through something my skype name is "omnis_aut_nihil". Thx.

 

You can download a copy of your motherboard manual here, in case you don't already have it:

ftp://driver1.cptech.com.tw/manual/a480a7 rev a1.pdf

It is ~5MB in size, with a relatively slow server, so you'll have to be patient.

OK, now that I've had a chance to read through your manual, I can tell you that you should download and open the .PDF file, so you can follow along with what I'm seeing. Open the .PDF file and find page 92 (out of 96 total pages).

The critical point in all of this is that first, you MUST enable the Serial ATA Controller (in the "CHIPSET" menu, of the "Southbridge Configuration" section of the CMOS settings), which it seems you've already done; so far, so good.

Next, press the <CTRL> and <A> keys simultaneously during POST to run the ULi RAID BIOS Setup Utility. You will then be able to create, delete, or rebuild a RAID array; you will ALSO be able to choose the JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) setting, which is what you WANT to do when you're using only ONE SATA drive.

According to the manual:

"The three major sections of the utility are: Main Menu, Drive Select Menu, and RAID Array List.

"Main Menu - this is where you create RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, and JBOD"

***** NOTE: The CRITICAL point there is the "JBOD" setting, which tells the system you are NOT going to use a RAID array at all; you can then install up to four SATA drives and use them INDEPENDENTLY of one another, just as you would with multiple IDE drives on a motherboard WITHOUT a RAID controller. *****

"Drive Select Menu - the connected drives and their respective information will be shown in this menu. There are two RAID drive selection bar(s) and one boot drive selection bar.

"RAID Array List - existing and newly created RAID arrays are shown in this section of the utility."

If anything you've read there isn't clear, just google "JBOD", and you'll see a lot of good information, starting with this link:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/jbod.htm

That should help you understand this better; you use the "JBOD" option when you DON'T want to create a RAID array on the SATA ports. The JBOD setting allows you to install only one SATA drive, or any number up to four, WITHOUT creating a RAID array (which isn't possible with only one drive, as you already know.

Read through this a few times to be sure you understand it, then boot up and find the settings you need to select the JBOD option. Once that is done, you should be able to migrate your data from the IDE drive to the SATA drive, then change the settings once more so you can BOOT from the SATA drive.

This can be VERY confusing if you've never worked with the JBOD option before, but take your time, and you'll get through it. If you have any questions, post them here, and someone will try to point you in the right direction. I'll check back whenever I can to see how you're doing, but I have a heavy schedule this weekend, so I don't know how often I'll have the chance to follow up on this. Now that I've got you pointed in the right direction, some of the other techs here should be able to help you over any other rough spots.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that you'll have to reinstall the ULi RAID drivers if you've removed them; otherwise, they shouldn't be a problem, unless they're corrupted. Since you mentioned installing them previously, I didn't want to waste much time going over steps you've already covered.

Good luck with this; keep us posted on your progress...