SATA Hard drive

Hey guys I just got an SATA hard drive and was wondering why my computer won't recognize it. I have it hooked up using the SATA connector and the SATA power. But when my computer boots up it says that both SATA0 and SATA1 have no devices. Do you have to have 2 and run it RAID? Or can I just hook up 1? Any help is greatly appreciated.

My computer:

3.0ghz P4 Prescott
1gig pc3200
AsRock P4V88 RAID
Western Digital 40gb 7200rpm IDE
Hitachi 80gb 72000rpm SATA
Powercolor ATI Radeon 9600 256mb
Windows XP Pro with SP2

 

Install the 3rd party sata controller drivers before windows

 

Like Rikky says , you should have a floppy disk that came with your Mobo and when you install Windows all the generic drivers will start to go on and if you look closely at bottom left of screen it will ask you 'do you want to install Raid' here you hit F6 , then follow instalation through until it asks you to put your floppy in and install the drivers for raid. Good Luck..

 

What if I just want to use it as a storage drive and I already have windows installed?

 

Install the via driver and see if it finds it,if not create a floppy with the floppy download and install it.
http://www.asrock.com/support/Download/dl_p4v88.htm
I think these are the right ones triple check them ,dont blame me if they are wrong!

 

Ok I tried that. Still nothing. The utility shows up prior to bios and I can configure RAID but it says I have no drives attached. Whats up with that? Do you have to have 2 drives in order to use SATA? Because I only have one. I hope I don't have to order another drive just to use this one. Oh well if I do its n o biggie it was only $60.

 

Few things.
To run raid you need two HDD's, most PC's/controllers require either two sata or two ide HDD's.
You can use or run one SATA HDD, just no raid setup.
Make sure your cables are connected properly, power & sata cable, if your drive has two power connects, ONLY! use one.
Make sure in Bios your sata is enabled.
All driver Etc. from MOBO cd are installed on your HDD that has windows.
Might not be recognized cause it's not formated!
Go to Computer management/Disk Management can the drive be seen there, if so, format it.
Another option, what brand SATA is this, you can use manufactures Utility to recognize it and format it, these utilities will see the drive when windows does not, can also diagnos problems with the HDD.
Maxtor is MaxBlast 3
WD is Data LifeGuard Tools
there are others, all free downloads, I think some are avaible here at MG too:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html

 

Yah I knew that I could only run raid using two or more HD. I was just wondering why I couldn't see the one SATA drive. I figured it would at least show up in the BIOS. What is weird is I can't find anything about SATA in my BIOS. There is a screen that comes up before BIOS that scans for devices and says that both SATA0 and SATA1 have no devices attached.

All cables are hooked up as they should be. I only have one power connector hooked up also. I'll try formatting it but I think I might have looked for it under disk manager before.

 

In your BIOS look under Boot priority . I think its the top one of page. there you can enable SATA (Add in card) and EIDE , so with your OS on EIDE that should be at the top above SATA you move to priority using the 'Page Up or Down' keys.. hope this helps ...but if sata not there it sounds like a format issue if you have loaded drivers.. Now i had a prob a while ago with the list of drivers on the floppy , there are about 8 i think, so its picking the correct one to suit the HD .... copy of my post a while ago ...

Sorted, thought i'd let you guys know how it went.. NEVER, NEVER believe what you read in MOBO Manual or what info can be gathered from Mobo site.. I was lead to believe that that the driver I needed to install on F6 was Sil 3112 Sat Raid .. But not so.. I came accross it by chance in the F6 window 'A'' Drive' install , I never knew that the 5 drivers in window on screen could be scrolled and that was where the driver I needed was ''via sata raid XP' driver.. not the one I had read previous... lesson learnt..

there are more than 5 drivers on SATA disk..

 

I'm giving up. I think the HD is just broken. It won't recognize it no matter what I do. It doesn't even show up in the BIOS. Gonna suck having to RMA it. Any last ditch ideas?

 

Had this problem 2 days ago, and you probably need to go into the BIOS and set it so that it will recognize the sata drive.. On the MSI board with AMI Bios, it was under onboard controllers, and eide controllers. Can't give more details, as I'm heading out the door. In my case, I had to enable sata in order to dee the drive. Good luck.