Hello
I’m new to building a computer so I need all the help I can get. The problem is the computer doesn’t seem to find the hard drive, when it starts xp setup and it comes to a point to hit enter to start loading files I get a message (setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. There is no hard drive activity at all. It shows up in the bios under hard disk boot priority. I hope someone can help.
Gigabyte Ultra-393 mobo
ATI 9700 Radeon videocard
AMD 64 3500
Audigy Platinum sound card
Samsung 1024 pc3200
Western Digital Raptor SATA 74GB

You need to provide Windows setup with SATA controller drivers on a floppy disk (hit F6 when prompted during setup so you can install these drivers). Gigabyte's website will have the drivers you need, although you should have been supplied with either a program on the motherboard CD to make a SATA driver disk or an actual floppy disk with drivers.

I have tried all of that..even giga byte has sent me a driver to use and it didn't work, went and bought a maxtor sata thinking hd might be bad but no differance.The drive is shown in the boot. It has to be something in the bios but I don't know what.I just want a boot drive with the Raptor and storage with the Maxtor.This is a used motherboard...the sata ports on it must be working it recognises the drives in bios.....Right???.HELP PLEASE

Something's not right with the driver install then! Remember - you must hit F6 when prompted during the Windows XP setup. Does Windows ask you for a driver disk? Are any drivers found and loaded from that disk?

Also, your motherboard looks like it has more than one SATA controller, with each controller chipset from a different manufacturer. Make sure you have the right drivers for the SATA controller you are attempting to use!

Hello thanks for the help, Yes I hit F6 when it's shown at the bottom of screen during xp setup....then it prompts for a S for mass storage drivers. I hit S,insert floppy with the drivers giga-byte sent me(nforce 3 raid),then I have a choice of two options, raid driver or a storage controller I have tried both at once and each of them by themself.

I have looked into that also.
The 2 SATA II ports are controlled by the Nvidia nf3 chip and the
other 2 SATA I ports are controlled by the SIL 3512 chip.

Also it takes a long time to read (open) the driver floppy in my old computer and it seems to install in no time at all in the new one,or is it the turtle vs the hare thing ???

So is your hard drive plugged into the NF3 controller or the Silicon Image controller? If it's hooked up to the SIL3512, then the NF3 RAID drivers will not work!
I'm not sure how you're comparing the two. What performance measure are you using exactly?

I found this last night while trying to solve the same problem (installing XP Pro). Generic drivers did not work. This thread provided some good clues. The solution was on the CD that came with the Asus motherboard but there was no useful documentation on the CD, or in the User's Guide, or on the Asus web site.

First, the system needs a floppy drive, at least during the OS installation.
Next you need to create the SATA driver floppy. If you have a DOS boot floppy with CD drivers, everything can probably be accomplished with the new system, but a second system with a floppy and CD drive will be quicker. (Elsewhere, a few posters choked on the prospect of resurecting an "antiquated" floppy and talked about slipstreaming the necessary files onto a rebuilt XP CD. Using a floppy is a lot simpler.)

What files need to be on the floppy? The first is txtsetup.oem. Find that file and the others will be close by. On the Asus CD they are burried in \Drivers\RAID\FloppyImage\965-965L. Those were the ones that worked, but there were ones that didn't work for me in \964_180 and in \964plus180(181). I copied two files (txtsetup.oem and sisraid) and one folder (RAID) to the floppy. The RAID folder contains 2 folders (winxp and win2000), and each folder has 4 files (property.dll, sisraid2.inf, sisraid2.inf, and sisraid.cat). The same 4 file names in both folders. So, there are a total of 344KB in 3 folders and 10 files.

Have the floppy ready and boot the XP installation CD. After a few seconds there will be a prompt at the bottom of the screen to "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver." Press it quickly or you will miss the chance. After pressing F6, you won't know for at least a minute that the system recognized it. Then "Setup could not determine the type of one or more mass storage devices... To specify additional SCSI devices ... press S."
Immediately after pressing S, "Please insert the disk labeled Manufacturer-supplied hardware support disk [what gave them the idea that it was labeled?] into Drive A. Press Enter when ready". After that it takes at least another minute before you know if it worked and the drive is recognized. If not, look for another set. I built 5 floppies before one worked. Good luck.

Asus K8S-MX micro ATX MoBo
Athlon 64 3400
1GB Mushkin 3200
PNY Quadro4 900 DVI/DVI
Seagate ST380013AS 80GB SATA