New Hard Drive Not Detected

[Dark Auro]

Well, I just recieved my western digital 250GB SATA hard drive today from Fry's and I'm having problems. I really don't know what to say just that the hard drive is not being picked up. I want to copy everything from my old hard drive to the new one so both are hooked up right now but the SATA hard drive isn't being detected. My motherboard is a ASUS K8V Deluxe. Hope you guys can help. I'll try and give more information if you guys need it to help me solve my problem.

 

[psyno]

Have you installed your Promise drivers from the CD or--better--from here?

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

Have you enabled it in the computer manager section of windows? It won't recognise your internal hard disk unless you enable it in the disk manager utility.

 

[Dark Auro]

Psyno: Yeah, I installed all the drivers when I first got it.

Kazuki: Do you mean in the device manager in the system part of the control panel? If so, it isn't even showing up there to enable.

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

nah not the device manager, the disk manager. Theres a whole heap of management utilities in windows. I can't remember what they're under 'cause I'm at work atm on a mac. It's definately under the control panel. But I'm pretty much 100% certain that's what you have to do then it'll work. Same thing happened to me when I bought my extra internal hard drive.

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

when i get home ill tell you how to do it, if someone doesn't do it before me.

 

[blahblahblah]

You have to install SATA drivers before you install windows. Your SATA drivers are probably on your motherboard CD. Put those SATA drivers onto a floppy.

Once Win2K/Xp is setting up, at the first blue screen hit "F6" to load a thrid party mass storage driver. If you miss this, you will be warned that there are no harddrives attached. Restart the machine and Tap the "F6" Key a few times as the CD is spinning up. Windows will go through its install routine, then prompt you for an OEM disk for your MASS STORAGE CONTROLLER. Insert the floppy you created in the steps above, and load the first driver on the list. <Purposely skipped part about RAID> LEAVE THIS FLOPPY IN THE DRIVE!

Let 2K/XP do the partiiton and isntall. Choose isntall to the empty disk & choose NTFS FULL format, not quick. If you don't have any other hard disks on your regular IDE channels, there can be a LONG pause after the format, be patient.

IF YOU HAD THE LONG PAUSE DURING INSTALL, you will have the same booting into 2K/XP. Once the install is all done, go into the BIOS, and change "AUTO" to "NONE" for all channels wherer there are no devices connected. NOTE: This is for your regular IDE channels, not your RAID array.

Let windows do its thing. Follow these instructions even if you don't have a RAID array.

If anybody is planning on getting a SATA harddrive, print these instructions. You will need them.

 

[Dark Auro]

Well, blahblahblah, that might be the case but I'm pretty sure that they are already installed. I remember the motherboard CD did come with the drivers but I think they are installed. Here's a pic of what I'm pretty sure are them and they are all working properly.

 

[blahblahblah]

If you think they are installed, that means they are not installed. Pop in your motherboard CD and see if you can install the RAID drivers directly to windows. That may solve your problem.

 

[Dark Auro]

Well, it did let me install the RAID drivers but I did have to do the Promise drivers manually and I did that but it still did not work. I got two more pictures. The one shows the underlined RAID driver that installed automatically and the other shows the instructions to install the promise drivers and I did that.

 

[blahblahblah]

I am out of constructive ideas. Here are some random things you can try.

- Make sure you have Windows XP Service Pack 1 installed.
- Make sure your SATA cable is plugged in the primary (or #1) spot on the SATA controller.
- Motherboard makes (like Asus) like to annoy you by putting many different SATA drivers on your motherboard CD (not accesible from the pop-up menu). In fact, my motherboard CD had 4 different drivers for SATA drives. Yours maybe the same way.

Good Luck getting your harddrives to work, I'm going to sleep. :cheers:

 

[Jmechy]

I have a simillar controller (promise fasttrack 376) and the same sata hd (WD 250 gig Caviar). I had to plug in both WD's cable AND the legacy power cable to get my drive to work. Something about modern motherboards not being able to handle the strain from a harddrive being directly attached. Once you have that, boot from the CD that came with the drive, and your good to go.

 

[TheRook]

make sure you drive has power (either using a serial ata power connector or a standard 5 1/4 power connector) and also your serial ATA lead is plugged into primary sata slot. when your system boots does it mention anything about SATA bios? if so go into that... check see if it registers your HDD and do a format of it in that facility (it takes a while with my 120 so it will take a while for ur 250 ) if you dont get that SATA bios option (on my board its ctrl + S to ge tinto it) check your bios to see if SATA is enabled...

another quick question is this going in as an additional drive or are you trying to install windows on this?

To install windows xp you need to install ur SATA drivers when you first get the blue screen of windows installation (F6 for additional something or other)

Hope this helps if not post some more details please

Andy
TheRook

 

[Dark Auro]

Jmechy: Thanks, I'll try that soon and see if that works.

TheRook: Right now I have both my Maxtor (old main hard drive) and my Western Digital connected to the computer. I want to copy EVERYTHING from the Maxtor to the Western Digital then take the Maxtor out when it's done so basically all I really want is an exact copy of my old hard drive just with more space.

 

[dream431ca]

I never heard of anybody copying information from one hard drive to another.

 

[Dark Auro]

Well, Jmechy, it not seem to work and I'm pretty sure I did everything you said. Anyway, I got some more info that might help solve the problem. Whenever I boot up the computer, while it goes through everything, at one part it will say:

Serial_Ch0Master: No Device
Serial_Ch1Master: No Device

Now, it has been always saying this since before I put in the new hard drive so I wasn't really sure if this is part of the problem. But now, since I did put in the new hard drive I also get this message when booting up:

No Arry is defined..................

And it says something about pressing Ctrl F to go into FastTrak settings or something like that. I'm really starting to give up on this stupid thing and thinking about taking it back if I can't get it to work by the end of the day.

 

[thehunter1320]

did you format the new drive?

 

[psyno]

You're close! You either need to set it to operate in non-RAID mode or you need to build a RAID.

(The problem is definitely here and not with the OS).

 

[Jmechy]

That happened to me too, sorry, i musta forgot. basicly you need to go in there, and define an array. Since you only have one drive on the controller, it'll be easy, no choices to make, just keep pressing enter or whatever to create the array and apease the system. Then the drive SHOULD be recognized, and you can boot to the included cd.

 

[Dark Auro]

Alright guys, I created the array last night and copied everything so long story short I got it working and everything is done and this thing is great. Wanted to thank you guys for your help.