Member Avatar for Gallienus

Hi,

Just bought a Western digital 10,000 rpm sata Hard drive that I'd like to use for boot. Motherboard has 6 ata ports + an IDE. Have an old IDE HDD as master w/ an IDE cd-rom. When I plug in the sata hard drive it isn't recognised by computer bios. If I change the IDE hard drive to slave then it isn't recognized.

So what's the problem with these sata hard drives? Why does nothing recognise them?

Update -- if I disable the old IDE Hard drive and only connect the sata, when I boot from a CD-Rom then no hard drive at all is found. The bios recognises it as sata-1 but after that it's dead.

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Dani AI

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Good progress so far: the BIOS seeing the drive as "sata-1" means the disk is getting power and the controller is talking to it, so this is most likely a controller-mode / driver mismatch rather than a dead drive. correctly points at Windows installer driver issues, and 's note about changing the BIOS SATA mode explains why Linux behaved differently. The steps below focus on confirming hardware/BIOS, and on practical ways to get Windows to see and boot from the drive.

  • Check the basics first: ensure the SATA power connector is seated, try a known-good SATA data cable, and try the drive on a different motherboard SATA port (preferably the primary chipset ports labeled SATA0/SATA1).
  • Check the motherboard manual to see if some SATA ports are on a secondary controller (JMicron/Marvell/etc.); those often need separate drivers and are not detected by the stock XP installer.
  • If the BIOS offers SATA Mode options, try "IDE/Compatibility" for initial Windows installs; set AHCI only after the OS has the correct drivers installed.

When installing Windows:

  • For Windows XP the installer will not include many SATA/AHCI drivers by default. You can either supply the controller driver during setup (the old "press F6 and load from floppy" path) or create an integrated installer (slipstream the drivers into the XP CD using tools like nLite).
  • Vista/Win7 include more built-in SATA support, but it's still a good idea to use the chipset drivers from the motherboard vendor after install.

Extra checks and cautions:

  • If BIOS recognizes the drive but the installer does not, it is almost always an OS-driver/controller issue, not the drive itself. Use the drive manufacturer's bootable diagnostics (for WD, the Data Lifeguard utilities) to verify the disk if you suspect hardware failure.
  • Changing SATA mode after installing Windows without preparing the OS will usually prevent booting; only switch modes after installing correct drivers or following the vendor-recommended procedure to enable AHCI safely.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

Hi,

Just bought a Western digital 10,000 rpm sata Hard drive that I'd like to use for boot. Motherboard has 6 ata ports + an IDE. Have an old IDE HDD as master w/ an IDE cd-rom. When I plug in the sata hard drive it isn't recognised by computer bios. If I change the IDE hard drive to slave then it isn't recognized.

So what's the problem with these sata hard drives? Why does nothing recognise them?

Update -- if I disable the old IDE Hard drive and only connect the sata, when I boot from a CD-Rom then no hard drive at all is found. The bios recognises it as sata-1 but after that it's dead.

when installing winxp on a sata drive you need to hit the f6 key when asked, to install drivers for the sata ,these drivers are usually on the motherboard disk that came with the computer .the drivers will need to be on a floppy disk to load . before the drive will be recognized by winxp

Member Avatar for Gallienus

Thanks very much. I shall try that. I did get the new sata HDD to boot under Linux (RHEL5). I didn't set the sata up as ACHI under bios which did the trick.

I am still having problems installing Windows on it's partition. I may upgrade to Vista which hopefully would have sata on the CD but will try the boot floppy.

Thanks very much.

John K.

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