A few easy SATA questions for you guys...

[Sulaco]

Hey guys,

I just got my new 200Gb Seagate SATA HDD from Newegg today, and went ahead and installed windows on it.

Everything went as smooth as butter, and I didn't even need to use any "third party drivers" at the setup screen.
However, when creating a new partition before the Windows install, it would only detect 130Gb of disk space. I went ahead and installed Windows anyway, since I heard SP1 fixes this (?).
Once Windows was fully installed, I installed SP1, yet Windows still detects the drive as only being 130Gb (I suppose because its only on a 130Gb partition).
So my question is, how do I make the partition for the full 200Gb? Is that where the Segate "hit F6 to load any third party drivers now" part comes in? If so, will I need to format the drive again (not a big deal)?

Also, my last question: How do I get my SATA drive to show up in BIOS? The drive boots just fine, obviously, but is not registered as a boot device in my BIOS screen. And as soon as I put in my IDE HDD as a slave drive, it is booted from first since I suppose BIOS technically doesn't detect my SATA drive, yet Windows still loads just fine.

Sorry for the easy questions, but I'm tired and sick and would just like to get this drive operational and everything installed on it by tommorow afternoon.

 

[William23]

yeah, the drives need to be installed with windows at the "press F6"prompt

what exactly are your components and mobo?

 

[Sulaco]

I have:

Chaintech VNF3-250 Mainboard
A64 3000+
9800Pro
1 optical drive
1 floppy


..so downloading the Seagate utility and using it at the F6 prompt will allow me to parition the drive for the full 200Gb then?

What about the BIOS thing? Would this be related to the drivers as well?

 

[William23]

yes, download the seagate utility and format and partition with that.It should give u all 200gb's

does or do u know if your mobo has plug and play bios,I would assume it does.Otherwise to get bios to detect it only plug your sata device,nothing on ide connector reboot and see if it detects it then

we'll figure it out I had same thing happen to me before

 

[Insane3D]

Your best bet is as follows.

Make a sliptreamed XP SP2 CD. You can find the intructions here...

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=295

Burn a new CD with Nero or another burning program...instructions here...

Using Nero 6

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=297

Using Nero 5

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=296

Using Easy CD/DVD Creator 6

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=311

Using Easy CD Creator 5

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=298

Once you have a bootable, slipstreamed XP SP2 CD, do a fresh install. Windows setup should correctly recognize the full size.

You do not need to use the "F6 Procedure" for that board.

LMK if you need any more help..

 

[Sulaco]

Uh oh...I don't need SP2, do I?

You see, I'm on 56k, and downloading Sp2 would take hours, easy. I'll get around to it eventually I guess, but just would like the drive recognized (and all the space recognized).

And Insane3d, I suppose you are familiar with the VNF3-250 then? When you said my board does not need the f6 method, do you mean it doesn't need it IF I do your suggested method of slipstreaming Sp2? I have a feeling I'll need to do one or the other...

 

[William23]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
Your best bet is as follows.

Make a sliptreamed XP SP2 CD. You can find the intructions here...

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=295

Burn a new CD with Nero or another burning program...instructions here...

Using Nero 6

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=297

Using Nero 5

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=296

Using Easy CD/DVD Creator 6

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=311

Using Easy CD Creator 5

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=298

Once you have a bootable, slipstreamed XP SP2 CD, do a fresh install. Windows setup should correctly recognize the full size.

You do not need to use the "F6 Procedure" for that board.

LMK if you need any more help..

that's what I thought to but wasn't sure if the OP knew how,but good links
however I dont think that helps him in getting his bios to detect the drive?on my older pc I had to install the drive without anything on the ide channel,was the only way my darn mobo would detect it,then hooked everything back up and bingo.As for the F6 procedure, the drivers can be installed from windows with the drivers disk.....just tryin to be helpfull

 

[William23]

Slipstreaming SP2 is not going to help your drive be detected,I wouldn't bother.First get your bios to detect the drive.Then try slipstreaming

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: Sulaco
Uh oh...I don't need SP2, do I?

You see, I'm on 56k, and downloading Sp2 would take hours, easy. I'll get around to it eventually I guess, but just would like the drive recognized (and all the space recognized).

And Insane3d, I suppose you are familiar with the VNF3-250 then? When you said my board does not need the f6 method, do you mean it doesn't need it IF I do your suggested method of slipstreaming Sp2? I have a feeling I'll need to do one or the other...

Yeah, at some point you will probably need SP2. That would take you forever to download on 56K though. Any chance you have a friend with a CD burner and a high speed connection?

The F6 method is only if you are setting up a RAID array, or you are using a non native SATA configuration...like if you were using a PCI SATA card, or your board's ports were controlled by an add-on PCI controller. The Chaintech's SATA ports are native from the chipset, so the OS sees them as IDE ports.

If you needed to do the F6 method, your XP setup wouldn't even see the drive at all. It sees it, it just doesn't report the correct size right?

As for SP2, worse case scenario, I believe you can order SP2 on a CD from MS for free.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: William23

that's what I thought to but wasn't sure if the OP knew how,but good links
however I dont think that helps him in getting his bios to detect the drive?on my older pc I had to install the drive without anything on the ide channel,was the only way my darn mobo would detect it,then hooked everything back up and bingo.As for the F6 procedure, the drivers can be installed from windows with the drivers disk.....just tryin to be helpfull

From what I'm reading, his bios and windows see the drive, it just doesn't recognize the full size because the ATA-100 spec was only for up to 130GB originally. I wasn't trying to knock your advice, I just don't think the F6 method applies to his problem.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: William23
Slipstreaming SP2 is not going to help your drive be detected,I wouldn't bother.First get your bios to detect the drive.Then try slipstreaming

From his OP...

I just got my new 200Gb Seagate SATA HDD from Newegg today, and went ahead and installed windows on it.

Everything went as smooth as butter, and I didn't even need to use any "third party drivers" at the setup screen.
However, when creating a new partition before the Windows install, it would only detect 130Gb of disk space. I went ahead and installed Windows anyway, since I heard SP1 fixes this (?).

That is not an F6 issue, it's a windows issue.



I'm assuming you've loaded the latest nVidia drivers correct?

 

[William23]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: William23

that's what I thought to but wasn't sure if the OP knew how,but good links
however I dont think that helps him in getting his bios to detect the drive?on my older pc I had to install the drive without anything on the ide channel,was the only way my darn mobo would detect it,then hooked everything back up and bingo.As for the F6 procedure, the drivers can be installed from windows with the drivers disk.....just tryin to be helpfull

From what I'm reading, his bios and windows see the drive, it just doesn't recognize the full size because the ATA-100 spec was only for up to 130GB originally. I wasn't trying to knock your advice, I just don't think the F6 method applies to his problem.

yeah I see your point.show him how it's done

 

[Insane3D]

We are all here to help. Whether you have 1 post, or a million. No offense taken I hope.

 

[William23]

Originally posted by: Insane3D
We are all here to help. Whether you have 1 post, or a million. No offense taken I hope.

no offense taken!! I just hate to see ppl get new hardware and not be able to use it.But I'm humbled by someone with more experience than me:beer:

 

[William23]

Sulaco, I'm sorry if I confused you,but Insane3D is correct. you do not need to use F6 for your mobnce you have windows installed there is a windows patch that allows windows to detect the entire size of your drive.It should be on your motherboard drivers cd or you can get it from windows site I believe.

But good luck

 

[William23]

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html
this is the link to the utility to enable drives larger than 137gb's,it will be the file labled Reg48bitLBA for windows xp SP1 and windows 2000 SP3.It's the third link down on the page. Just click on it and it's a self exe. file

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: William23
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html
this is the link to the utility to enable drives larger than 137gb's,it will be the file labled Reg48bitLBA for windows xp SP1 and windows 2000 SP3.It's the third link down on the page. Just click on it and it's a self exe. file

Nice find...

I would still suggest trying to get a hold of SP2. You can make a custom slipstreamed copy with all the latest drivers for your hardware so you do a fresh install and you are DONE.



BTW- Where do you live? If for some reason you can't get the free SP2 CD from MS, I could probably just burn it for you and mail it...

 

[yelo333]

This is a little OT, but I've got to ask:

Is your seagate a little loud? Like, case-vibrating loud? It seems as if they got sued for using that acoustic management stuff, and had to disable it in their new drives...I'm just trying to confirm this. Do you have this issue?

 

[William23]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: William23
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html
this is the link to the utility to enable drives larger than 137gb's,it will be the file labled Reg48bitLBA for windows xp SP1 and windows 2000 SP3.It's the third link down on the page. Just click on it and it's a self exe. file

Nice find...

I would still suggest trying to get a hold of SP2. You can make a custom slipstreamed copy with all the latest drivers for your hardware so you do a fresh install and you are DONE.



BTW- Where do you live? If for some reason you can't get the free SP2 CD from MS, I could probably just burn it for you and mail it...

A little of topic,but Insane3D thats an incredibly nice thing to offer. Thats why I like the Anandtech community,ppl will go out of their way to help even nOOb's. Here's one for you man:beer:

 

[Insane3D]

Even I was a n00b at one point...

 

[Sulaco]

Thanks very much to everyone who's replied thus far. You've all ben very helpful.

Just to clarify my situation a bit: I was able to install Windows quickly and easily on my new Seagate HDD, even though according to my BIOS, it is not a boot device. In fact, I don't see it listed anywhere, and the BIOS "auto detect" doesn't find anything. Now everything seems to refer to "Primary IDE boot device" and what not, so I'm thinking does that have something to do with it? Obviously it's not an "IDE" drive.

But regardless, the drive will boot windows just fine now (except it only reports 137Gb) as long as there are NO OTHER IDE hard drives attached as well. Even with my old Maxtor connected as a slave drive, it will boot as first. Not a terribly big deal, since the reason I bought a 200Gb drive in the first place was to not have to have any other drives connected. But still, it would be nice if BIOS recognized it.

And a big thanks to the person who provided that link to the Seagate app. My biggest concern was enabling Windows to see the full 200Gb, and it looks like that program should do the trick. I'll give it a shot and report back on how it works.

Thanks again guys! As always, your help is very much appreciated!

 

[Sulaco]

...ok, just downloaded the "48 bit LBA registry update" and it says it worked and restarted my computer.

However, I'm STILL only getting 130 Gb as my drive size. I'm kinda getting frustrated. This registry update is supposed to enable large drive support with SP1 installed (which I have), yet so far, nothing.

What exactly do I need to do to get Windows to recognize the full 200Gb??

 

[Insane3D]

It probably recognizes the extra drive space now, but since you formatted it as 130GB, it's not showing up because it's now unpartioned, unformatted space. Even if you fix windows so it sees the rest of the drive, you are still going to have to reformat to get the whole drive as one big partition. All you are going to be able to do without a reformat is to make the extra space a seperate drive, like D: or something.

This is part of the reason I suggested going SP2. The only way you could get Windows to see it as one big drive is to install windows on another drive, apply the patch, then install the new drive, format it, and clone the windows install over to it.

Good luck...

 

[Spikesoldier]

go into disk manager and you should probably have the extra space 'seen' as unallocated space.

just make that unallocated space a new partition, have a 130 and a 60, dont put all your eggs in one basket, believe me partitioning is better than having one large chunk.

i personally have a 80gb hard drive that i started out with, installed windows on it. i then added a 160gb hard drive nearly a year later, when i started to back up DVD's and ran out of space on my old drive.

C and D are on the 80, E and F are on the 160.

C: 15gb (windows + desktop + documents, etc)
D: 60gb (program installations)
E: 50gb (blank right now, important backups)
F: 100gb (dvd/video editing swap)

edit: needless to say, if my windows installation just said FU, or its time to reformat or switch to a different OS, i wouldnt be hurting nearly as bad, since i can back up the little data i have on C: to D:, or onto my other disk before wiping the C: drive, this is the beauty of partitioning.

 

[boomerang]

I just took a look at your motherboard manual to see if I could help you with BIOS settings to get your drive recognized.

I'm unable to get the full manual. I get only 44 pages and the index shows there to be 71.

Poke around in the boot order and see if there is an option for SATA of Serial ATA. You may even have to choose SCSI although newer boards should have one of the first two available.

Be aware that even with the BIOS set correctly and the SATA drive recognized by the BIOS, the introduction to the system of another HD with as OS on it, may result in booting off of that drive.

I've done installs of XP on drives with 98 on them where I have set the boot order such that there is no HD option in the boot order and had them boot into 98.