installing SATA for the first time - HELP!!

hello guys

I just bought a brand spanking new 250gb SATA hard drive and am having trouble getting it to work.

I have 2 computers, one of which uses SATA as the primary disk(the only disk actually) and the other pc that uses 2 IDE's. I installed the 2nd IDE myself and had no problems with that. I have never installed a SATA before though and am trying to install it into the PC with the 2 IDE's.

I'm sure im connecting it ok, its just the bios wont recognize it for some reason. I tried it in the other pc which already has the SATA drive running and it worked without any configuration. I just whacked it in and booted the pc and it worked.

I had a look at the bios but im not sure what to change. Its a hitachi HDD if thats important and an AMD based chipset on the motherboard running awardbios

Any help appreciated

Try the disk that came with your mother board , It probably has drivers on it to make the sata ports active, or get the make model of motherboard and download the setup disk from the company site.

You may need to go into the BIOS Setup and enable the SATA ports before the drive will be seen.

I had a problem trying to install a SATA drive sometime ago and it too wasn't being recognized in BIOS. The problem was solved by removing the overclocking I had and go to the minimum clock frequency available in the BIOS. Worked straight off. CPU is an AMD Sempron 2800(1.6Ghz)

SuperSparks is right. The SATA ports have to be manually enabled. They are defaulted as disabled, as problems will also arise if an enabled port has no drive connected.

alright. i have tried my best to correctly configure the bios for this drive but to no avail and i would greatly appreciate some advice.

I have here several pictures of my bios settings if you would be so kind to take a look.

http://tomyn.com/images/virtualdr/1.JPG

That is a photo of my main bios setting page. It is awardbios run on a MS-6775 (microstar) motherboard.

http://www.tomyn.com/images/virtualdr/2.JPG

That is one of my integrated peripherals page. When i have PATA disabled and SATA enabled the IDE hard drives are inaccessible. When i have both enabled i get the following message just before the bios searches the boot devices

http://www.tomyn.com/images/virtualdr/4.JPG

When i try to set the boot devices in bios i cant see the SATA drive and when i disable PATA i cant see the IDE drive here either. Both master and slave are set to auto

http://www.tomyn.com/images/virtualdr/3.JPG

I will try anything. I have tried the SATA drive in SATA 1 and 2 port on my motherboard but both give same results. Considering that there is an option to enable SATA on my bios i assume that it is actually capable of doing so.

Thanks for looking and please if anybody has any suggestions dont be shy

thanks

Would you post the make and model of the computer or mobo if a custom/home made one.

Need to see if we can find a manual for it.

im way ahead of you train. I have searched the internet for a manual for my motherboard and apparently it doesnt exist. google brings up many results of people complaining that there is no manual. I have searched the microstar website and either they dont support this motherboard any more or they are too embarrassed to take responsibility for it.

I have just noticed as well that windows xp device manager shows a raid controller with that lovely little exclamation mark. On further google investigation i need to install the proper raid drivers from my motherboard manufacturer but as i said, they dont acknowledge my motherboards existence.

The computer make is "time" who are now bankrupt so finding information from them is not an option

MSI had (and possibly still have) a nasty tendency of supplying OEM motherboards to computer makers that you can never find :mad:

Post the model number anyway, one of us may know places to look that you don't.

Or you can cheat and add a non Raid pci SATA controller card.

What I am thinking of doing with my MSI board and stay away from onboard raid malarkey.

Kind of looking at this one as it has eSATA also. http://www.promise.com/product/produ...product_id=168

according to pc wizard

General Information :
Manufacturer : MSI
Product : MS-6775
Version : 1.0
Serial Number : 00000000
Support MP : Yes, 1 CPU(s)
Version MPS : 1.4

Chassis Information :
Manufacturer : Uknown Chassis Manufacture
Type : Desktop
Version : Version 1.00
Serial Number : 123456890
Asset : 0123ABC

Sensor Information :
Monitoring Chip : Winbond W83697HF

I trust the product is the model number?

Product : MS-6775

That is the model number.

In PC wizard, selet Mainboard, then in the right side click the chipset.
What does it say in the lower pane.

I figure it is modeled after one of the socket A mobos listed here.
http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?f...e&maincat_no=1

General Information :
NorthBridge : VIA KT600
SouthBridge : VT8237 PCI to ISA Bridge

NorthBridge Information :
Architecture : Northbridge
Manufacturer : VIA (VIA Technologies Inc)
Revision : 80
Bus Speed : 166.5 MHz
FSB Frequency : 333.1 MHz (DDR)
V-Link Bus Width : 8-bit
V-LinkRate Speed : 8x
V-Link Host Clock : 66.97 MHz
V-Link Speed : 535.76 MHz
V-Link Bandwidth : 4286.08 MB/s
AutoDisconnect : Yes
DownStream Priority High : No
UpStream Priority High : No

Memory Information :
Type : DDR-SDRAM PC2700
Frequency : 166.5 MHz
DRAM/FSB Ratio : 1/1
ECC Diagnostic : No
Interleave : 4-way
CAS Latency (tCL) : 3 clocks
RAS to CAS (tRCD) : 3 clocks
RAS Precharge (tRP) : 3 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS) : 7 clocks

Bus Information :
Version : 3.5
Transfert Rate supported : 4x, 8x
Transfert Rate : 8x
Aperture Size : 128 MB
AGP enabled : Yes

APIC Information :
Version : 0.03
Maximum Interrupts : 24
IRQ Handler enabled : Yes

Device Capabilities (PCI) :
Latency Timer : 8 clocks
I/O Access : No
Memory Access : Yes
Bus Master Capable : Yes
Special Cycle Recognition : No
Memory Write & Invalidate : No
VGA Palette Snoop : No
Parity Error Response : No
Cycle Wait : No
System Error Line : No
Fast Back-to-Back : No
Detects Parity Errors : No
User Defined Format : No
PCI 66Mhz Bus Support : Yes
New Capability List : Yes
PCI Support : AGP
PCI Support : Power Management Interface


I had a look at the website. If my motherboard is based on one of those listed motherboards then how can i tell which one?

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?f...2_no=&cat3_no=

I tried to match the
NorthBridge : VIA KT600
SouthBridge : VT8237 PCI to ISA Bridge
Cpu and the like.

You can click the picture for a larger view and it probably is close to your mobo.


There are some BIOS changes between my KT4AV [MS-6712] and the K8N Neo4 [MS-7125] but the manuals are not that far apart as long as the chipsets are the same brand. Just a few more settings in the K8N.

But I think we are close enough that the manual should do for you.

If that SATA drive is a SATA-2 drive (3Gb/s) there might be an issue with the fact that this board undoubtedly only supports SATA-1 (1.5Gb/s) Check the setting of this drive in the other system with Hitachi's Drive Feature Tool you can download from their site. If it is a SATA-2 and it is set to 3Gb change it to 1.5 Gb and try it again in the MSI system.

:cool:

This link may help
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...0&SubCatID=143

Dennis

so i checked out the similar motherboards manual. cant find anything about enablinf SATA drives. In fact i did a search for "SATA" (case insensitive) and it returned 0 results.


According to hitachi's website i shouldnt need to (and cant) change jumper settings to assign the drive as primary or slave. It does it itself. It is also apparantly backward compatible with SATA due to not being able to change the jumpers or something...

The last post scared me off when i was expected to overwrite files in my system32 folder.

So im thinking that the pci card is the best option for me. but saying that, how does it work? do i install drivers for the pci card then the SATA drive will just work when plugged into that? so no SATA drivers needed?
Ive seen one with 2 SATA ports and 1 IDE. Good for me unless you can tell me a reason why not

Lastly, i only bought the SATA drive because i had a choice of either SATA or PATA and had never even heard of PATA. I have only just found out that PATA is IDE which i would have prefered. Doh

Quote:

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Originally Posted by themanwhowas

According to hitachi's website i shouldnt need to (and cant) change jumper settings to assign the drive as primary or slave. It does it itself. It is also apparantly backward compatible with SATA due to not being able to change the jumpers or something...

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It is backwards compatible because, if necessary(!), you can set it to SATA-1!

This is not done by jumpers but by using the Drive Feature Tool. The name of the utility kind of gives away its function. They not only make jumperless mainboards nowadays you see.

I have 7 Hitachi drives from 80 to 500 GB and 4 old IBM drives. IBM is where the Drive Fitness Test and the Drive Feature Tool originate from before they were taken over by Hitachi. So I am quite familiar with these tools.

:cool:

Oh yeah.... Almost forgot..... The reason SATA drives don't need master or slave settings is because SATA drives do not share a cable as PATA drives can do.

:cool:

Did you download the driver package from the link I provided?
If you did you will see that all you have to do is unzip the driver package, copy the files in the "Drvdisk' folder to floppy.
Use this floppy to instal you SATA driver at the 'F6' prompt.

Dennis

it doesnt matter now. When i set SATA to active in bios the system refuses to load at all. I have messed the bios up trying to get it to work and i dont feel confident enough to reset it.
I was going to take the SATA back but thought i should just spend some time trying to install it as a learning experience. silly me.

So it looks like its pci time but..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by me

how does it work? do i install drivers for the pci card then the SATA drive will just work when plugged into that? so no SATA drivers needed?
Ive seen one with 2 SATA ports and 1 IDE. Good for me unless you can tell me a reason why not

---

thanks

Both integrated RAID controllers (one is PATA and the other SATA) on one of my main boards can be set to ATA or RAID (the PATA controller) and BASE or RAID (SATA) depending on whether you just want to use extra drives not in RAID arrays or drives actually in RAID arrays. You haven't told us whether your BIOS has such additional settings. If it does and it is set to RAID theoretically the controller might refuse to 'see' your drive because you have only one drive attached which is not sufficient to do anything useful on a RAID controller. And of course it might not work because it may be set to SATA-2 which might not work on the controller as I have suggested twice already. Why haven't you run the Drive Feature Test?

It would help if you told us which Hitachi drive exactly you are working with.

And if the BIOS setting has become too messed up just reset the defaults with F7 and start from there again. With the defaults most things should work. Just check whether the integrated peripherals need to be enabled after the defaults have been set.

And this main board doesn't hide by any chance the more advanced settings until you activate them as the main board of mine I mentioned does? It only shows me the 'advanced' settings after I press CTRL-F1. And I had to actually read the manual to find that out. :eek:

:cool: