[Help] Win XP Setup recognizes my SATA HD, but not the partitions!

[gus779]

Hello everyone!

I have a WD 74GB Raptor HD (SATA) installed on my Asus A8N-E motherboard (with AMD 3500+ and Enermax 350W as PSU). This is the single HD I have on my computer. I donated the old IDE I had. When I first installed Windows XP Home SP2, I created 2 partitions (50%-50%) at XP setup and installled Gate's software on one of them and filled the other with files (for backup purposes).

Now I decided to format the boot partition (C:\), so I ran XP SP2 setup. However, during the installation it recognizes my Raptor, but not my partitions. It shows as if it weren't partitioned, with full 74GB. So, I figured I would have to press F6 to install the SATA drivers that come with my mobo, using my floopy. I did that, but it still doesn't recognize the partitions (when i first installed, this step wasn't necessary as it recognized my HDD right away and, therefore, I create the partitions). When loaded, Windows XP recognizes both partitions and I use them normally, I'm only having problem during the XP Setup.

My BIOS is using the latest revision (1011) and I'm using the nvidia 6.70 drivers. I even created an slipstreamed CD using nLite with the SATA/RAID drivers that came with the nvdia 6.70 file I download, but windows installation can't recognize the partitions and I don't want to format the whole drive everytime I need to reinstall XP. I've searched Google up and down and all I found was about windows not recognizing the HD (not my case). I couldn't find any single page about my problem: "recognizing the HD but not the partitions". Any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated as I don't know what to do anymore...

Thanks,

Gustavo

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--Sonic

[Sonic]

Try to make your floppy with latest drivers from 6.70 package if you use native sata or the latest drivers for the thirdparty sata chipset.

[gus779]

I tried that already, but it didn't work. However, I managed to correct the partitions using TestDisk and now windows xp setup sees them!Great! Thanks anyway!