problems seeing new SATA drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter drummersteve
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drummersteve

New member
hi there,
iv got a montherboard with 2 SATA connections available along with two IDE Connections. i am current;y using an IDE connection to connect up to my master hard drive. i have just bought and hooked up my new seagate SATA 120Gig drive, but when i go into my computer, it cannot see my new drive.

ive installed the drivers and things which comes with the motherboard CD, RAID, but it always seems to be reffering to 2 SATA drives. i intend on sing my current IDE drive for rograms and my SATA for my audio drive. does anone have any ideas and tips why i might not be able to see it? please reply with as much ionformation as you can give! thanks alot.

Steve
 
you need to format the drive before windows will see it. that gets me every time i add a drive too.
go to control panel....administrative tools...computer management...disk management....and then you should see your drive. then just format it
 
Also, you may need to enable SATA in your Bios. Deopending on how windows is setup on your machine there is a possibility that once you format the drive you will have to import it as well for windows to see it and use it.
 
If he can't even see the device, it's not an issue of formatting or partitioning. Could be that the power isn't hooked up (first SATA drive I made that blooper) or that it's not enabled in BIOS.

EDIT : Also, make sure it's hooked up to the SATA1 connection on the motherboard. Some boards *cough*Soltek*cough* make you hook it up to the first if you don't have any other drives connected.
 
Last edited:
xtjdx said:
If he can't even see the device, it's not an issue of formatting or partitioning. Could be that the power isn't hooked up (first SATA drive I made that blooper) or that it's not enabled in BIOS.
Click to expand...

It's possible that the controller isn't enabled in the BIOS, although as a rule they are on by default. Since the controller is software (I've never seen a hardware SATA controller on a mainboard - PCI cards yes, but not in mainboards), once the SATA driver is installed this usually sorts itself out.

AFAIK the drive won't show up in 'My Computer' until it has been partitioned and given a logical drive letter.

It would definitly be worth looking in the BIOS/checking relevant connections if the drive isn't showing in the 'disk management' bit of Windows though.
 
For seeing the drive itself, I'm talking about in device manager.

Codmate said:
(I've never seen a hardware SATA controller on a mainboard - PCI cards yes, but not in mainboards)
Click to expand...

Check out a Soltek board or two, you'll find one (seriously).
 
xtjdx said:
For seeing the drive itself, I'm talking about in device manager.
Click to expand...

And the poster is referring explicitly to 'my computer' :)
 
Formatted drives won't show up in XP until they have been mounted at an admin level. So at first they may seem like they are not showing up.
 
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