# SATA HDD not recognized by XP during install



## J.D. Malinger (Jan 13, 2005)

Hi, having trouble installing Windows XP on fresh Asus A7V600-X MoBo with one SATA harddrive (no other HDDs, hence no RAID). The motherboard recognizes this HDD, but Windows doesn't when I try to install XP. I've put the drivers for the HDD on floppy disk, and they are in the directories where they should be. When I try to install XP, I press F6 in order to install 3rd party drivers. When I have the option to press "S" to get drivers off the floppy, I do that. Windows takes the appropriate drivers off the floppy, and continues to load other items. Then it says it's ready to install Windows XP, and gives me the option of 
installing, repairing, or quitting. I choose install. The very next window says I don't have a harddisk. This is as far as I've managed to get. All cables are properly placed and work fine. CD drive works fine. Floppy drive works fine. Latest BIOS installed. I don't know if the problem is with the OS disk, but just in case, it's a Dell-branded Reinstallation CD of XP Home. I've been on the net all day reading dozens of posts on this issue, but have failed to find anything that's helped. Anyone out there know what to do? I know I can't be the first person attempting to do this! 
Thanks! 

Specs:
MoBo: Asus A7V600-X
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Ram: 512 MB
HDD: Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 80GB
CD-ROM drive
Floppy drive
anything else you need to know?


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## Worren (Jul 2, 2004)

I have to clean some rusty brain cells but I'll give you what I can remember. I ran into this with an Asus P4C800ED. As I recall I had to go into the bios and set the primary to SATA and disable IDE. I pulled all the cables except the one for the SATA drive and it worked. You should disable anything to do with IDE until the install is complete. I don't remember needing drivers for the HDD. If you're installing Raid you need drivers. Set the hard drive settings to auto detect. Immediately after installing Windows, install the chipset drivers. Don't install anything before the inf_inst. Hope this little bit I can remember helps.


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## funka-zz (Jan 13, 2005)

*ASUS P4C800-E SATA RAID issue*

Been trying to install a win 2003 server on a my ASUS P4C800-E motherboard with Intel 875P chipset, two MAxtor HD's RAID 1 config. Probby: BIOS recognizes drives, RAID utility tool works great, pressed F6 to load windows raid driver config from boot CD, loaded Intel Asus SATA drivers from disk, all ok there, but when Windows setup loads to install it recognizes no Hard Drives.... I read a post before on this forum with similar problems (answ: scan80269), hoping you could give me a hint, thx a mill. 


It could be one stupid thing which hasn't been checked (haven't found it) yet : the aopen case only provided IDE power cables for the HD's, no SATA power cables.. got the right motherboard SATA dataconnectors but no SATA powerconnectors.. Could it be just that ? (although BIOS and RAID utility respond well....? )


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## Worren (Jul 2, 2004)

I use A-Open tower cases. Normally they don't include SATA cables. They are provided with the P4C800ED. Again, I'm a little rusty here but as I recall, Seagate drives use 2 cables, 1 data and one power. Western Digital uses a large data cable which locks into the drive and uses a standard molex. The bad thing is that I'm not familiar with Maxtor's cable setup. Fortunately SATA cables are cheap so any computer retailer should have what you need.


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## funka-zz (Jan 13, 2005)

*cables...*

Supertx! The data connectors, no problem , but I should probably get another case fan then ? Seeing the power cables are provided from the case fan or are there any other possibilities there ? ( I lately installed pc in one newer case which had 1 SATA power cable comin' out of the case fan, BTX type fan ...) Connect a sata powercable to a IDE power cable ? The data SATA connectors were delivered with the Asus mainboard, no power cables however... Any idea where or how a loose bought SATA power cable could be connected ? thx ..


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## J.D. Malinger (Jan 13, 2005)

Worren said:


> I have to clean some rusty brain cells but I'll give you what I can remember. I ran into this with an Asus P4C800ED. As I recall I had to go into the bios and set the primary to SATA and disable IDE. I pulled all the cables except the one for the SATA drive and it worked. You should disable anything to do with IDE until the install is complete. I don't remember needing drivers for the HDD. If you're installing Raid you need drivers. Set the hard drive settings to auto detect. Immediately after installing Windows, install the chipset drivers. Don't install anything before the inf_inst. Hope this little bit I can remember helps.


Thanks Worren,
Just wondering, if I disable IDE and/or pull all but the SATA cable, then how will my CD drive work? The only other cables are for my CDRom and floppy drives, without which I can't install. Also, I must admit I'm completely new to this, as this is my first home-built computer, and the language everyone here is using leaves me a little confused. So when you say "Immediately after installing Windows, install the chipset drivers," I'm wondering exactly which those are/where to locate them/how to install them. Ditto when you mention, "inf_inst." Not sure what that is. But wish I were! Well, if you can me fill in on this... much obliged.


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## RON47 (Jan 14, 2005)

*SATA drivers...*

If memory serves me correct, drivers for SATA support were only included in Windows XP in SP1 and later. If your Win XP edition is prior to SP1 then there is no support for the SATA Hard Drive.


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## charliep1 (Jun 30, 2004)

RON47 said:


> If memory serves me correct, drivers for SATA support were only included in Windows XP in SP1 and later. If your Win XP edition is prior to SP1 then there is no support for the SATA Hard Drive.


That is the purpose of having the SATA drivers on a floppy. I loaded original XP without SP1 using a SATA drive by placing the SATA drivers on a floppy. 


To J. D.

I would run manufacturer diagnostics on the drive.
Charlie


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## J.D. Malinger (Jan 13, 2005)

I'm not sure how to do that, but I wonder if it's necessary. The drive seems to work. I installed Mandrake Linux on it (but got rid of it after a few days since it wouldn't do much besides freeze), and formatted the drive as a single primary dos partition using a win98 se bootdisk. (it would only let me format it in fat32. do i need to format it as ntfs in order to get it to allow a win xp install?) 
What else have i done since the last post? i made an "unattended install boot cd" of win xp which incorporated the viasraid driver files in the cd-rom. that hasn't worked. not sure what else to say, except i'm desperate for a solution, and need all the help i can get. please help me if you can!!!


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## charliep1 (Jun 30, 2004)

Last time I loaded Linux to a HD I had to zero fill it before I could get Windows to use it. Your drive manufacturer utilities will have a zero fill option which will return the drive to new status.
Charlie


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## J.D. Malinger (Jan 13, 2005)

Thanks for all your help. At last, problem solved! and it was so simple. If anyone else is having this problem of not being able to install XP to a SATA drive, check your power! I simply switched from the newer 15-pin power input jack on the back of the hard drive to the legacy 4-pin jack.

I got the idea that it was a power issue when i downloaded Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test and started to running the tests. Sometimes I would get the disposition code "0x00," which meant that the "operation completed successfully," and other times the same test would come back as "0x20," which meant "device not found," or in other words, it couldn't see my hard disk. The random way this would happen made me think power was at best intermittently getting to the hard disk.

So now Windows is installed. I'm a bit worried about the disk continuing to crash, but only time... Anyway, I hope this info can be of use to someone else.


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