K8V and single SATA as only harddrive

[geesquared]

Hello..

I have just joined this forum and this is my first post.

I am trying to build a K8V with 3200 Amd64 cpu. The idea is to use a single SATA drive as the only hard drive in the system. Not interested in Raid at this point.

I have a Maxtor 80BG diamond max 9 drive.

I have tried just about every combination of SATA connectors and jumper settings and finally, with the promise controller enabled and its sub menu changed from RAID to IDE, on boot the post sees the drive.

I figured wahoo now I can install xp so changed bios to boot from CD rom, all the stuff starts loading into memeory and them window dies because it can't find a hard drive to install on. Trying to install xp SP1.

Can anyone please tell me how to do this.. ie. what copnnect, what bios settings and how to get windows to install on this drive.

Thanks for your assistance.

geesquared.

 

[T2T III]

Hmmm ....

Some ideas:

1) Have someone make a Windows XP boot disc for you.
2) Find a way to copy the files from your CD to the SATA hard drive.
3) Run the installation from there.

This issue seems tricky. However, with more and more SATA drives out there, the issue must have a fix.

 

[prvteye2003]

when installing xp on a sata drive, you have to load the sata drivers during the installation of xp. When it asks you if you want to load any special drivers, just hit F6 and then have the drivers on floppy, then they will load.

 

[mechBgon]

I have to eat and run for work this morning, or I would give you more-detailed help, but start by reading Section 5 of your manual and note the Makedisk.exe (to create that driver floppy).

 

[geesquared]

The F6 solution with the floppy worked just fine. Thank you all for your help.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I have to eat and run for work this morning

What happened, get a flat?

 

[mrman3k]

Originally posted by: geesquared
The F6 solution with the floppy worked just fine. Thank you all for your help.

I am in a big rush to build this new computer with SATA on the KV8-Max3 and if someone could give me a link to the F6 solution or tell me what to do that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: mrman3k

Originally posted by: geesquared
The F6 solution with the floppy worked just fine. Thank you all for your help.

I am in a big rush to build this new computer with SATA on the KV8-Max3 and if someone could give me a link to the F6 solution or tell me what to do that would be greatly appreciated.

When your computer is booting from the Windows CD, one of the first blue screens says to press the F6 key if you have third-party disk-controller drivers to add. So you press the F6 key, and Setup gets itself ready, and after a couple minutes it'll stop and say to press the S key if you have any drivers on a floppy diskette that you want to feed it.

Now you press the S key and put in a floppy that has the necessary drivers. And for your KV8 Max3... lessee here... drivers page. Note that there are two SATA controllers on it: the VIA SATA that's in the motherboard's own southbridge, and the SiliconImage that's running off the PCI bus. I would use the VIA one since it is not on the PCI bus, but rather on the fatter V-Link.

You only need to supply the drivers for the controllers that you'll use during Windows Setup, so download those VIA SATA drivers and extract them, or find the equivalent driver on the ABit CD-ROM and extract them to floppy from there (the CD might even have a disk-making utility, I don't know).

 

[TiDo]

K8V single drive SATA requires floppy drive


After fiddling around the whole (long) weekend, I finally got XP installed. With a single SATA drive, I first tried the VIA, then the Promise controllers, neither worked at first. It took me a while to realize the F6 ?trick? but since I was hoping to avoid having to buy a floppy drive, I was stuck. Using a Lexar USB jump drive/stick I got a bit further. After pressing F6, XP install eventually accessed the SATA drivers (I used the makedisk for the VIA drivers on the ASUS CD and then copied the files to the USB drive). But after this ? and I think XP install needs access to the drive a second time - an error message saying something along the lines of ?Please Insert the Raid SATA controller drivers??. No matter what I loaded onto the Jumpdrive made XP install go on. During this process I also noticed some sort of conflict between the USB Keyboard (Logitech Elite Duo) and the USB drive: at bios startup the Keyboard would stop working until I pulled out the USB drive ? perhaps that is what caused all the trouble). With hindsight I definitely recommend a floppy drive rather than a USB drive for the installation.

I finally conceded defeat and bought a floppy drive and it worked nearly flawlessly. Set BIOS to enable VIA and disable Promise and installed XP and all the drivers, set boot sequence etc. The system still needs a lot of tweaking as I am getting random reboots from time to time. I suppose memory settings/location are to blame. Currently the Corsair 2*512 matched pair are on 1 and 3. Playing around with memory settings will be my next time wasting activity?

My Setup:
Athlon 64 3200+
K8V Deluxe
Corsair 1GB TWINX1024-3200C2
Hitatchi 160 GB SATA
eVGA GeForce 5950
LG 4081B

 

[Viper96720]

Here's conservative settings that worked for me.
cas 2.5
trc 11
trfc 14
trcd 3
twr 3
trwt 3
tras 8
trp 3
Using a stick of buffalo 512 with the winbond ch-5 memory.

 

[Caminetto]

From looking over the K8V info it looks like the VIA drivers are only for use in a raid array. Geesquared did you use the Promise or the VIA for a single drive? Has anyone used the VIA drivers from a floppy to install as a single drive?

 

[geesquared]

 

[Caminetto]

Just to update.
I installed a maxtor 120 gig/8 mg sata as a single drive using VIA drivers and makedisk from the Asus kv8 cd. I notice that your only option is to use NFTS file sys (no fat32). Everything is working fine except that PC Pistop diagnostics. says that the performance of this drive is horrible.