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help with sata drive


keith180

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Hi,

I just installed a 1tb sata drive as a second drive in my computer. My bios recognizes it and it shows up in device manager. However when I click on "my computer" it is not there. I am using XP sp2 and I have an Nvidia mobo with sata and ide connectors. My primary hard drive is a pata. Do I need drivers and can I install them without a clean install of my OS. The hard drive did not come with an install disk. I also added a sata optical drive at the same time and that is not working either. It spins the disk but nothing shows up. Thanks!

Keith.

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Hi,

I just installed a 1tb sata drive as a second drive in my computer. My bios recognizes it and it shows up in device manager. However when I click on "my computer" it is not there. I am using XP sp2 and I have an Nvidia mobo with sata and ide connectors. My primary hard drive is a pata. Do I need drivers and can I install them without a clean install of my OS. The hard drive did not come with an install disk. I also added a sata optical drive at the same time and that is not working either. It spins the disk but nothing shows up. Thanks!

Keith.

I believe you've got something more needed other than just assigning a drive letter using the management tool. XP has no SATA controller drivers included with it, so they have to be added, either slip-streamed or after installation. It's the CONTROLLER that needs the drivers not the drive. This would account for your optical drive not showing up. There are no "standard" SATA controllers, so all the drivers are different. Usually a motherboard has an install disk with controller drivers on it, would be the first place to look. Take a look first in the Device Manager for controllers under SCSI and Raid Controllers, Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager. If there's an entry with the yellow triangle icon, it's probably the SATA controller without a driver. SATA controllers show up as SCSI. Go through the Update Drivers procedure to add in the SATA controller driver from your MB disk. Then you can add the drive via the management utility and partition, format it and assign drive letter(s) as needed. You might want to download the latest from the MB site.

Some BIOSes have a way to run SATA in a crippled mode so they look like IDEs to the OS, you might look in the BIOS to see if you have such a mode for the SATA controller, just for future diagnostic needs.

Stan

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@Tripredacus, It will show up by just assigning a drive letter. If you were to click it in explorer you would then be prompted to format it.

@stans4, he already said he see it in device manager. Hence he needs no drivers...just like my mothers Dell with a SATA hard drive.

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Well I went to computer management but windows did not prompt me to initialize the disk. Clicked around on the toolbar options and did not find any "format disk" options either. The only choice I had was to "create a partition". With nothing to lose at this point I chose to create a partition and lo and behold, it assigned a drive letter and formatted the disk. When the process was over (quite a while with a 1TB disk) I have a fully functioning hard drive. Now I still cannot get my optical drive to work, I installed the software that came on the disk and updated from the Asus website, but still no joy. The drive spins when I put in a disk, LED's flash but nothing happens. Could it be a bad drive at this point?

Thanks again for the help with the hard drive, that is what is so great about the online community and forums!

Keith.

Edited by keith180
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I also added a sata optical drive at the same time and that is not working either. It spins the disk but nothing shows up.

Is it also recognized by the bios ? If yes, does it show in Disc Management ? If no, check the smaller cable at both ends.

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I also added a sata optical drive at the same time and that is not working either. It spins the disk but nothing shows up.

Is it also recognized by the bios ? If yes, does it show in Disc Management ? If no, check the smaller cable at both ends.

It does show up in disk management and the properties say it is working normally. Troubleshooting is no help!

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