SATA drive not working

[Varg|Hund]

haha, this is my third thread here in the time of a week, but I really need help

Anyway, so I went out and bought a new 200gb SATA hard drive today, and went home and connected it to my computer. No problem.
But, when I started the computer, it just didn't show up. Anywhere. I've tried changing the jumpers on my old hard drive to Slave, but that had no affect. The new one simply isn't showing up.

Any idea what the problem might be?

 

[bliink]

Did you enable it in the bios?

 

[Varg|Hund]

..I had a brief look around, but couldn't find any option for enabling it. Where should I look?
(my motherboard is an DFI AD77 Infinity, if it makes any difference)

 

[NetGuru42]

There are a couple of things I can think of that might be wrong here...

Is the SATA drive you got SATA II (3.0Gbps) or SATA (1.5Gbps)? And which version is your motherboard capable of? If you have a SATA II 3.0Gbps hard drive, and your motherboard is SATA 1.5Gbps, you will have to change a jumper on the SATA hard drive in order for it to be recognized. Check your motherboard/computer manual and SATA hard drive manual to see whether this is the case.

The second thing I can think of is like what bliink said... the SATA controller on your motherboard may be disabled in the BIOS. Check to see if it is enabled in the BIOS before you mess with anything else.

And btw, your old hard drive can be left on Master... it won't have any effect on your SATA hard drive.


EDIT: I looked it up, and the motherboard you listed has SATA 1.5Gbps. Check your hard drive SATA version.

 

[bliink]

..I had a brief look around, but couldn't find any option for enabling it. Where should I look?
(my motherboard is an DFI AD77 Infinity, if it makes any difference)

I'm not sure specifically, but I am pretty sure that you'll need to enable it in the bios before it will show up.

your bios is based on award-phoenix, if that helps any

 

[Varg|Hund]

NetGuru: Well, it says Serial ATA/150 on the box of the hard drive, and the external transfer speed is 150 mb/s, does that make it SATA (1.5Gbps)?

bliink: Any idea where in bios I should enable it?

(btw, could it be a driver problem or something like that?)

 

[bliink]

bliink: Any idea where in bios I should enable it?

(btw, could it be a driver problem or something like that?)

If it were a driver problem, windows would probably still give you some indication it was there.

In bios, look under any hardware tabs.

also, I presume you've already looked for it in Disk management? Your disk needs to be formatted before it shows up in explorer IIRC.
start>control panel>administrative tools>computer management (disk management is then in the sidebar on the left.)

 

[NetGuru42]

NetGuru: Well, it says Serial ATA/150 on the box of the hard drive, and the external transfer speed is 150 mb/s, does that make it SATA (1.5Gbps)?

bliink: Any idea where in bios I should enable it?

(btw, could it be a driver problem or something like that?)

Yes, it is a SATA 1.5Gbps drive, you should have no compatibility issues, then.

There is a possibility that there is a driver problem if you are not seeing it in windows. HERE is a link to the latest driver from the DFI website (I think). Try it and see if it helps.

Otherwise, you can look in the motherboard manual from the DFI website. HERE is a link to the manual page for you motherboard. You will have to find out what revision it is. That should tell you how to enable SATA in the BIOS if that is indeed the problem.

 

[Varg|Hund]

bliink: no, it doesn't show up in disk management either :/ I'm about to have another look in BIOS now

NetGuru: When I tried to install the driver, it gave me an error message saying "Sorry, the install wizard cannot find the supported hardware in your system. You should check your hardware and try again."

any other ideas what it might be? :/

 

[Varg|Hund]

I just checked the BIOS, and SATA/RAID is enabled. So that can't be the problem..

 

[NetGuru42]

NetGuru: When I tried to install the driver, it gave me an error message saying "Sorry, the install wizard cannot find the supported hardware in your system. You should check your hardware and try again."

The DFI site lists a few different drivers on THIS site for your motherboard. That one should have been it, however you can try THIS also and see if that will work.

If that doesn't take care of it, I recommend that you contact someone at DFI concerning this issue.

Also, just to be safe... you have only ONE power cord connected to the drive, correct?

 

[Varg|Hund]

yes, only one power cord

and sorry for being such a noob, but how does one install the thing from the second link you just posted? there's no setup or anything

 

[NetGuru42]

and sorry for being such a noob

There is no such thing as a stupid question... everyone has to learn sometime.

but how does one install the thing from the second link you just posted? there's no setup or anything

Open Device Manager (I believe you already know how to do this) and look for something called "HighPoint" or something like that. It will be some sort of disk controller, so you should be able to narrow down your search somewhat.

Once you find something that appears to be it, double-click on it. There will be a device window that opens up. Go to the "driver" tab and click "update driver". Click "No, not at this time" if it inquires about Windows Update. Then "Install from Specific/Advanced location" and point the "Include this location in search" option to the Win_XP folder that you extracted from the driver zip file.

Sorry if that was confusing... let me know and I'll go further in depth.

 

[Varg|Hund]

Thank you NetGuru, that did the trick