HELP!!!: SATA Questions

Tim Brown

Tim Brown

New member
Thanks for reading this - I've got a problem.

I bought two new SATA drives to connect to my ABIT NF7-S motherboard.
My intent was to use these just as regular HD's, in place of IDE's.

The problem is, the MB wants me to install them as either a Mirrored or Striped RAID installation. I don't want either of those. I want to use them as a pair of partitioned drives as "C: & D:" & "E:". (E: drive is going to be for my audio and video work.)


So, how can I get this to work?

Bios doesn't seem to recognize the drives - the RAID controller software sees them, and when I boot from this IDE drive and come into Windows, the Device manager sees them, but I can not access them to put information on them.


I'm going to pull this drive and see what I can figure out, and if I get this thing to actually work - I'll come back and tell what the solution was just in case anybody else has a similar problem.


Thanks,
Tim
 
Maybe it's the sata ports they are pluggted into that demand some kind of raid? Try moving one of them to another sata connector.
 
im not sure but maybe something with the jumpers on the hard drives? you might have to configure them properly for having 2 hard drives instead of one.
 
Are the drives formatted as yet?

What version of windows are you using.

Most of the time, you'll see SATA drives in the System view, but you won't be able to acces them unless they are formatted.

Nor will it show up in some BIOS.

If you're using XP, right-click on "my computer" (desktop, start menu, or explorer, whatever if your preference) and select "manage this computer" or "Manage".

Under "storage" select "Disk Management"
This shows all your HDDs, and their status. You can also use this view to format and partition HDDs. Once formatted through the disk manager you can usually then fid the drive in the Bios and use it as a boot drive, and it's a bucketload easier than trying to do it during a windows install
 
m not sure but maybe something with the jumpers on the hard drives? you might have to configure them properly for having 2 hard drives instead of one.
Click to expand...

Thats the whole point of sata, you dont have jumpers

Bios doesn't seem to recognize the drives
Click to expand...

It wont.
Make sure on startup both drives are configured in by the SATA controller bios , there should be an option there somewhere to go into the SATA controller setup

What brand controller is it?

On mine system (Abit IC7MAX3) My ICH5 Intel controller and the SI Sata controller are separate entities all toghether. I can only boot from the ICH5 and for windows to see any of the drives connected to the Silicon Image controller, correct drivers need to be installed. If that has been done, go to manage/disk managment as CPL state and make sure they are correctly mounted and formated there
 
cpl_crud said:
Are the drives formatted as yet?

What version of windows are you using.

Most of the time, you'll see SATA drives in the System view, but you won't be able to acces them unless they are formatted.

Nor will it show up in some BIOS.

If you're using XP, right-click on "my computer" (desktop, start menu, or explorer, whatever if your preference) and select "manage this computer" or "Manage".

Under "storage" select "Disk Management"
This shows all your HDDs, and their status. You can also use this view to format and partition HDDs. Once formatted through the disk manager you can usually then fid the drive in the Bios and use it as a boot drive, and it's a bucketload easier than trying to do it during a windows install
Click to expand...

I have "XP pro", and the drives (80 Gig WD's with a 8meg buffer built in) are formatted and paired as a Mirrored Raid. I'm just running them off of whatever the SATA connection is built into my MB. It is the Silicone Image one.

I intend to remove the "Raid" after I have them up and running. A friend suggested I remove one of them and just get the first one running, and once I have Xp working on it, that I then add the second one in, but I haven't tried it yet.



Tim
 
It seems like so far there are several distinct possibilities here. First off, check your manual for your motherboard. You might want to make sure that your motherboard is actually set up to provide you with SATA access without RAID. It seems unlikely that your motherboard would offer SATA, but only for RAID applications. However, you never know I guess.

I would definately take a look at your disk management from within Windows as well. If the drives are showing there, than they may just need proper formatting. You could also see whjat happens if you turn off your RAID controller in the BIOS. My bet though is that the drives are showing as unformatted in Windows itself and once you address the problem there, things will turn out differently.

You might also want to see if there is a BIOS update or more current drivers concerning SATA available form you Motherboard manufacturer or even from your chipset manufacturer.

The last option that I can think of is to go ahead and enter the RAID setup screen. Maybe your SATA ports are directed by whatever RAID chipset you have on board. Maybe there is an otpion inside the RAID sewtup for setting up a standard drive for regular access. Check your RAID manual etc...

I guess there is one ther option I can think of. See if your motherboard manufacturer has a FAQ on their website for you to check concerning SATA stuff,. or better yet, a Forum:D

Good luck:) I have been fortunate that with all of my SATA stuff (even my SATA DVD-RW) I have had no setup issues:)
 
you should be able to go into the raid utility in the bios and choose delete raid pair. although it's very strange that on a fresh install it defaulted to raid. i don't really understand that.
 
Sadly, Abit's website and Forum are both down. I checked yesterday.

There is no RAID manual for this product. There was just some info for setting it up under Windows2000 which I'm not even using, but it looked like it did the ame thing under XP Pro.

And it didn't automatically set them up as a Raid pair - I had 2 options: Striped or Mirrored, so I set them up as a Mirrored pair when I went into teh RAID software.





Tim
 
Tim,
Striped or Mirrored, so I set them up as a Mirrored pair when I went into teh RAID software.
Click to expand...

Thats where i think you went wrong. Just kill the array and dont do anything in the SI setup
 
altitude909 said:
Tim,


Thats where i think you went wrong. Just kill the array and dont do anything in the SI setup
Click to expand...

That's what I just did. I wiped out the RAID array, and now I'm getting ready to format them in the Disc Management as was suggested. I formated and partitioned one, and now I'm going to do the second one.



Tim
 
Well, I'm ready to throw my PC in the freaking river!

I can not, for some unknown reason, get XP to load on my SATA drives.

I'm at my wit's end with this.

Right now, I wish I had never heard of SATA drives before.
Something told me I should have just bought either new IDE's, or a SCSI drive.
:mad: :confused:




Tim
 
If they're going to be used as seperate drives you shouldn't need the RAID controllers, no?

Try installing just one HD. If you get everything up and running try adding the second one.

Or throw it in the river.
 
You should find a way to get into the sata controller bios. It is there that you have to configure how to use the drives. Now the possibility exsists that you cannot use those connections for anything else than raid. RTFM is the only way to make sure.
 
wait, are yo utrying to do a fresh install of XP onto a drive?
Then why not jsut boot from teh install disc and use the sata/raid drivers provided?
Formatting on install will make sure it works, jsut be sure to press F6 or F2 or Fwahtever when it asks (note that it wil only ask for 5 seconds, and it's the bottom line of text on the screen, right at the begining)
 
I can not, for some unknown reason, get XP to load on my SATA drives.
Click to expand...

You cant. The SI controller is not bootable. This is all in the manual btw. If you want to boot from a sata drive, it needs to be connected to your ICH controller
 
altitude909 said:
You cant. The SI controller is not bootable. This is all in the manual btw. If you want to boot from a sata drive, it needs to be connected to your ICH controller
Click to expand...


According to all the people at the ABIT Forum, you can do it - but for some reason mine just isn't allowing it to happen.

Evidently you do not have to use the RAID controller, it's just a real PITA to get the SATA stuff going right.

I don't know what manual you are talking about - my Mboard manual barely mentions SATA and only goes into it being used for a RAID, but I've read through tons of pages of people who have this thing set up on SATA.

So, tonight I'm going to strip my PC down to raw, and completely start over on the installation. That way, there's nothing competing with the SATA drives.


Tim
 
cpl_crud said:
wait, are yo utrying to do a fresh install of XP onto a drive?
Then why not jsut boot from teh install disc and use the sata/raid drivers provided?
Formatting on install will make sure it works, jsut be sure to press F6 or F2 or Fwahtever when it asks (note that it wil only ask for 5 seconds, and it's the bottom line of text on the screen, right at the begining)
Click to expand...

Yes, this is going to be a fresh install. I have 2 IDE/ATA drives, but they are dying slow deaths (These old drives are from 1999) So, what I intended to do, is use 2 SATA drives to replace the "PATA"/IDE drives. But it's been no bed of roses.... right now I regret ever thinking about using the damned things. I just thought it might help make things a little faster, since my regular/Parallel IDE would just have a CDRW and a DVD+RW on it.




Tim
 
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