Bob Harris
December 9th 03, 11:38 AM
I have XP home running on a Seagate SATA drive and
connected to an ASUS P4S8X motherboard. i rcall a few
steps were required to get things working, and maybe they
apply to your har drive and motherboard.
1. On my ASUS motherboard the SATA controller is also a
RAID controller. So, before doing anything, I had to buld
a RAID array of one disk. Be carefull that it does not
combine your two disks into one big RAID array. The
default array options were not what I wanted, so I had to
use the custom options to get the one disk in one array.
2. Once the RAID array was built, the POST checks would
list the hardware, even though it was unformatted.
3. I then used the Seatool provided by Seagate to do the
equivalent of FDISK and FORMAT. However, those tools were
a lot friendlier than working at the DOS prompt form a
boot floppy. I choose to make a few FAT32 partitions and
one NTFS partition.
4. I rebooted with a win98 floppy in the A:\ drive and it
could see the FAT32 partitions. Ataullat, it could also
see the NTFS partitions, since i have some special drivers
to read NTFS form DOS. These are free at
http://www.systeminternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml
..
5. I then installed XP form it CDROM, BUT HERE IS A TRICK:
Very early in the XP installation process I had to feed
SATA drivers for XP on a floppy. There was a message
something like press F6 to install SCSI or other drivers.
SATA is appaently in the same category as SCSI.
Now, I ralize that your SATA drive is not where XP is
installed, but did you ever fee XP some drivers for it? I
am not sure whther they are required, when XP is on a non-
SATA drive?
A couple of other thoughts: Be sure you have the latest
MaxBlast software, latest drivers, etc. The floppies or
CD you received with the motherboard and disks probably
contain out-of-date software. That is normal. Get the
latest from the manufactures websites. Also, check for
the latest BIOS for your motherboard. And epartely look
for drivers for the SATA controller, also form the
motherboard manufacturer.
>-----Original Message-----
>I bought a serial ATA Hard Drive for my new motherboard
>(with the new Intel ICH5 chipset) but booting from my old
>IDE/ATAPI drive (with a new Windows XP Pro SP-1
>installation). At first, Windows recongnized the drive
>but it was impossible to access it nor to format it. Then
>my Windows didn't recongnized the drive anymore. I tried
>with a program provided by the drive's manufacturer
>(Maxtor's MaxBlast 3) but this program didn't succeed in
>formatting the drive... At Maxtor, they don't have enough
>feedbacks from the end-users to help me further... After
>going through Intel's website, I understood that it isn't
>worth waiting for any kind of support from Intel to my
>specific chipset since they claim the driver provided by
>Microsoft in Win XP is enough.
>Do anyone have inspiration on this matter or even the
>same problem (I don't wish you so...)?
>.
>
connected to an ASUS P4S8X motherboard. i rcall a few
steps were required to get things working, and maybe they
apply to your har drive and motherboard.
1. On my ASUS motherboard the SATA controller is also a
RAID controller. So, before doing anything, I had to buld
a RAID array of one disk. Be carefull that it does not
combine your two disks into one big RAID array. The
default array options were not what I wanted, so I had to
use the custom options to get the one disk in one array.
2. Once the RAID array was built, the POST checks would
list the hardware, even though it was unformatted.
3. I then used the Seatool provided by Seagate to do the
equivalent of FDISK and FORMAT. However, those tools were
a lot friendlier than working at the DOS prompt form a
boot floppy. I choose to make a few FAT32 partitions and
one NTFS partition.
4. I rebooted with a win98 floppy in the A:\ drive and it
could see the FAT32 partitions. Ataullat, it could also
see the NTFS partitions, since i have some special drivers
to read NTFS form DOS. These are free at
http://www.systeminternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml
..
5. I then installed XP form it CDROM, BUT HERE IS A TRICK:
Very early in the XP installation process I had to feed
SATA drivers for XP on a floppy. There was a message
something like press F6 to install SCSI or other drivers.
SATA is appaently in the same category as SCSI.
Now, I ralize that your SATA drive is not where XP is
installed, but did you ever fee XP some drivers for it? I
am not sure whther they are required, when XP is on a non-
SATA drive?
A couple of other thoughts: Be sure you have the latest
MaxBlast software, latest drivers, etc. The floppies or
CD you received with the motherboard and disks probably
contain out-of-date software. That is normal. Get the
latest from the manufactures websites. Also, check for
the latest BIOS for your motherboard. And epartely look
for drivers for the SATA controller, also form the
motherboard manufacturer.
>-----Original Message-----
>I bought a serial ATA Hard Drive for my new motherboard
>(with the new Intel ICH5 chipset) but booting from my old
>IDE/ATAPI drive (with a new Windows XP Pro SP-1
>installation). At first, Windows recongnized the drive
>but it was impossible to access it nor to format it. Then
>my Windows didn't recongnized the drive anymore. I tried
>with a program provided by the drive's manufacturer
>(Maxtor's MaxBlast 3) but this program didn't succeed in
>formatting the drive... At Maxtor, they don't have enough
>feedbacks from the end-users to help me further... After
>going through Intel's website, I understood that it isn't
>worth waiting for any kind of support from Intel to my
>specific chipset since they claim the driver provided by
>Microsoft in Win XP is enough.
>Do anyone have inspiration on this matter or even the
>same problem (I don't wish you so...)?
>.
>