# [SOLVED] BIOS can't see SATA hard drive



## Gennyman (Feb 11, 2009)

Hi all,

I have been given a defunct home computer to work on (4 years old) after the original owner lost patience with professional repair services. I have no knowledge of it's history other than what I've been told.

It is supposed to have been working ok with two hard drives in master (40G IDE) and (500G SATA - one year old) slave formation. When a new printer was installed the installation software allegedly stopped non relevant data being written to the slave. After several visits to the repair shop with no progress on the fix, a new comp was bought elsewhere and the old one given to me.

I have decided to start from the beginning and reinstall XP on the 500G SATA drive. With only the SATA drive connected the first BIOS screen just shows the IDE channels as empty with no mention at all of SATA. If I go into the second screen and enter the drive priority field, the 500G drive is at the top.

When I try and install XP the install fails after the initial loading into memory and setup says there is no drive and asks to abort.

The first few seconds after post when the text is moving up the screen, I do see the 500G drive listed.

I have tried another known good formatted SATA drive and cable but result is the same. I have reset the BIOS with the pins on the mobo. I don't know what's been done to the machine in addition to the original fault.

Any ideas gratefully received and thanks for reading.

Pete


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

you may need to put the motherboards sata controller drivers on a floppy disk ........... boot into the XP CD and hit the F6 prompt to "load scsi raid drivers )

what is the make and model of this PC or motherboard make and model 

there are now alot of sata controller drivers embedded into the newer win xp install CD's that have service pack 3 intergrated into them ..................

you could do that also ............ by using a free program called "nlite" there is a guide at that website how to use it ...............


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## Gennyman (Feb 11, 2009)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

Linderman,

Thank you for your reply.

The computer was built by a corner shop to my friend's specs.
I have the mobo carton and it says Optronix OP-K9A200G-MLF.
I can't find a web site for Optronix so may be I'll have a problem getting any drivers I need?

I recently burned an XP Home/SP3 CD with Nlite and installed it today on the 40G IDE drive, although I still have to see how far it's got me? I was hoping to get on-line with it but at the moment the comp can't see the network, but that's a separate issue as I'd rather get the OS on the SATA drive and troubleshoot from there.

I missed the opportunity to hit F6 and will try it now and see what happens?

Thanks for your interest as although I not frightened of the insides of a computer, there is so much I don't know, especially the simple stuff!

Pete.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

does the win xp disk with SP-3 successfully install the OS to your sata drive ? if yes, then you dont need to mess around with that F6 stuff


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## Gennyman (Feb 11, 2009)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

For info:

cpu-z says mobo is RS/RX 480SB400
chipset ATI Xpress 200 (RS480)
Phoenix BIOS V6.00 April 2005

I will remove the IDE HD and attempt to install XP from the Nlite cd on to the SATA HD and report back.

Thanks for staying with me.

Pete.


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## Gennyman (Feb 11, 2009)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

Before I removed the IDE drive I checked in Device Manager and found various drivers flagged. Installed from Drivers & Utilities disk and the only one flagged now is a VGA driver. Two SATA controllers were flagged and they are now clear.
Plugged in SATA drive and comp froze. 

Attempted to install XP/3 on SATA drive as the only drive and setup failed reporting no drive found. It is still shown in second screen of the BIOS under Disk Priority but not on the first screen.

In the meantime, I've put the IDE HD back in the case and will try and figure out why I can't get online?

Pete.


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

I "think" your motherboards sata controller is a Sata-150 .............. which means if you are now trying to use a sata-II hard drive aka sata-300 ................. you may have to install the speed limit jumper to force the sata-150 speed

check your hard drive manual which can be viewed at the hard drive manuf's website


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## Gennyman (Feb 11, 2009)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

Although the SATA drive still can't be seen in the BIOS, XP3 in My Computer sees the SATA drive and has labelled it next in sequence. I can read and write to the SATA drive ok.

This is after slogging away trying to get SATA Controller drivers to install on a motherboard whose manufacturers seem to have vanished?
The drive won't hot plug as the computer freezes instantly when it's connected but if the drive is left connected and the comp restarted all's well.
I'm not happy with the fix but at least the machine's working.

Thank you for your advice.

Pete


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## linderman (May 20, 2005)

*Re: BIOS can't see SATA hard drive*

hot plugging a sata drive is never a guarantee unless the mobo says so directly; its more of a situation where sata drives are capable of hot swapping but not all motherboards support hot swapping ..............

I try to avoid that unless you are using a program to "park" the drive before yanking the power away


I use Revosleep when I want to hot swap drives


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