A8N-SLI Deluxe: XP can't see 2nd SATA drive

[ianp]

I have an A8N-SLI Deluxe running XP/SP2 quite happily on a single SATA drive on NV SATA #1 (i.e.black port, bottom right).

I am just trying to add a second drive, no RAID, on one of the other SATA connections.

1. Both drives are now seen, and correctly identified in the BIOS
2. All 4 SATA connections are enabled in BIOS
3. Both drives are listed in the BOOT options in BIOS

The first drive continues to work normally,
But the second drive never shows up in XP. i.e.
-It isn't available in Explorer
-It isn't listed under Hardware -> Hard Disks
-It isn't listed under Disk Management

I have tried the NVRAID setting at both Enabled/Disabled but it doesn't seem to make any difference, apart from XP loading the driver for the NV RAID when it was enabled.

[The second disk has a lot of data from another machine that I was hoping to copy onto the new system and then keep as a backup so I don't want to reformat it - but as it's not even listed in disk managmeent, I don't know I would even accomplish that.]

Can anybody offer any suggestions as to what steps I may have missed out or got wrong.

Thanks
Ian

 

[Interitus]

did you go through the process to detect it under disk management and it's still not coming up?

 

[ianp]

Oh - I am used to seeing the drive listed in Disk Management and then being able to partition/format it as required.

This drive isn't listed in Disk Management at all - the original drive is, and so is the DVD on the IDE, and so is my USB key-drive if it happens to be in use.

Is there is a process to let disk management "find" this elusive hard drive if it isn't listed by default?

[BTW in Device Manager, right click "scan for hardware changes" does add this drive to the listed hard disks either.]

 

[Interitus]

There's an option in Disk Management to rescan for hardware or refresh view. See if that helps.

It definitely sounds like a windows issue though if it comes up in the bios....

 

[ianp]

Ah Yes - Action>refresh and Action>Rescan
Tried both of these already with no joy I'm afraid.

I have been reading around and wonder if you or anybody can expand on this possible clue:

1. In Device Manager, I seem to have 6 IDE entires - which is odd for 2 cables each with 2 connectors! I read in a forum somewhere that this is the BIOS/OS treating the SATA drive(s) as PATA. Can anybody confirm this and/or explain how to get SATA treated as SATA. (Are there drivers needed that are not part of the main chipset drivers?)

 

[ianp]

OK - Progress.

I went into Device Manager > Hardware >
and sure enough under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers there are 3 Primary IDE Channel and 3 Secondary IDE Channel entries - each with a Device 0 and Device 1 under Advanced settings.

When I did my original install, I disabled all the entries that were not being used. I just didn't notice/twig that there were 2 in use - the real IDE DVD and the SATA-1 posing as an IDE or that there were more than their should be.

Adding the new SATA-2 it is trying to use one of these disabled Channels to pose as a 3rd IDE device.

I set all disabled entries to AutoDetect; rebooted; and the second drive was immediately available in Explorer with all my transfer data fully intact and ready.

So the main problem is solved, but obviously I want to know how to get these SATA disks to be recognized as SATA.

Anybody got any ideas?

 

[ianp]

OK - Major Progress

Rei-installed the Chipset Drivers (actually 6.39 from guru3d) and this time installed the IDE drivers. Last time I skipped this as the help message said it wasn't important unless you were using RAID - which I'm not.

Straight after install, I had the 6 IDE entries and 3 NVIDIA as well, but a reboot got rid of the IDE and left me with just the NVIDIA enties and XP re-discovered all my drives - SATA and IDE DVD.

What a difference a day makes!