Can't install SATA Drive

My old EIDE hard drive died on me so I went and purchased a new drive. I noticed that my motherboard had two SATA connectors so I decided to go with a SATA drive.

I plugged it all in but when I turn on my computer the Windows XP installation doesn't recognize it and the BIOS doesn't give an option to select a SATA drive.

My motherboard is a K8T Neo from MSI. Heelllpp.

At boot-up, hit F6 to install SATA drivers from (most likely) floppy disk. Same thing with RAID drivers, should you be needing those.

Ah, well that sounds good except I don't have a Floppy disk drive.

The hard drive came with a CD rom though. Eh?
Oops, the installation disc that came with my hard drive didn't detect any drives.

Go into the BIOS. If you see a RAID mode available anywhere, make sure it is turned off.

There is no RAID mode.

Problem still not solved. Heelllppp

Most probable is that there is a mobo SATA floppy or on the mobo CD there is a utility to create a floppy or even a CD with the SATA drivers on it. Extract them, put them onto the medium of choice and install via the 'F6' trick I originally outlined. And NOW you see the wisdom of keeping a floppy drive in a system!

Yeah, there have been many times in that past that I've wished I had a floppy disk drive. The people who put my computer together were morons apparently. Every part in my computer has died except my RAM. My hard drive was only the most recent thing, so I imagine my RAM is next.

So naturally they wouldn't install a floppy drive.

And then they went out of business so I can't even complain to them or try to get some money back. So annoying.

ANYWAY, can't create a bootable CD. Only floppy disk.

Any other ideas? The software that came with my HD can't detect my HDD and just gives me instructions on how to install.

NOW, the nice thing about this is that I can just take this all back to Best Buy tomorrow and swap it out for a EIDE. It might be slower, but I've been using EIDE all my life, so maybe I wont notice?

That isn't to say you guys should give up yet though. I am sure a genius idea will come to one of you eventually.
Tenn_Y_dos is offline       Reply With Quote

I'd say you should just go with an EIDE drive since you know that drive chain works.

If you still want to stick it out with the SATA, then go into the BIOS and look around all the menus for drive selection.  There MUST be one, since your system contains IDE and SATA plugs on the motherboard.  Sometimes these things are a little hard to find in the BIOS; just be persistent and keep looking.

Once you find the drive selections in the BIOS, make sure the SATA controller is turned ON.  I assume you're going to be using IDE for the CDROM, so keep that on, too.

After that, make sure the boot order is like this:

CDROM
SATA 1
IDE
USB

... with the first two being critical for what must follow.

Once you have the SATA enabled, and set to be the first device after the CDROM, then there's no rational reason why you can't load XP ... except in the rare instance that the motherboard implemented SATA in a way your XP copy doesn't know about.  In THAT case, hitting F6 during XP's installation will allow you to use the specific SATA driver for your motherboard (if you have it).

If you need to install the SATA drivers, then you'll have to locate them somewhere ... probably on the motherboard manufacturer's website.  Then, you'd have to stick them onto a floppy.  You might be able to borrow a floppy drive from a friend and connect it to the motherboard.  If the motherboard doesn't have a floppy connector, then hopefully the F6 option (which I've never used, admittedly) will let you access the CDROM.  You might need to burn the SATA drivers onto a CD in that case.

Sound like fun, yet?  Wheeee!  Computers are fun.

Let us know how it goes.  If the BIOS still doesn't give up its secrets, you may as well just give it up and go with an EIDE drive.

Yeah, I've looked all over the bios, opened every option and looked, and there is just nothing to do with SATA. It's weird. I definitely have the plugs that say SATA 1 and 2 on them though.

Maybe it has to do with the jumpers? Maybe I have to move them around or something so that they utilize SATA?

If your EIDE hdd died on you, I take it that you are trying to install XP on your SATA drive and the installation does not detect any hdd on your PC. To fix this (and to know why this happens), see http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml
And next time, STFG.

>>7
If you need to write a floppy disk but you have no drives, this may be of use:
http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html

You can then burn the floppy disk image onto CD as an 'El Torito' boot file, and use that instead.

WTF?????????  hahahahaha.