NF7-S v2.0 + sata II

[kronik42o]

hey, i know this is old hardware now but i want to keep it going a little longer before i cave in and build a new box. i have an abit nf7-s v2.0 board and i bought an 80gb seagate sata2 drive awhile back to use as my OS drive and could never get it to boot windows from it and tried everything i could think of back then even contacting the company that made the sata controller for the mobo and seagate. windows would install on the drive but not boot. only works as a storage drive in windows. i've been having problems with my wd's so i'd like to try and get that seagate drive working. i can't seem to find any info on it anymore, anyone know a jumper setting that resolved it? or maybe an upgrade on the sata controller for the board? anything?

 

[Heidfirst]

you'll probably have to jumper the hdd for SATA150 compatability & of course you need to F6 a driver for the controller if installing Windows on it as a boot drive.
see www.lvcoyote.com

 

[kronik42o]

thanks for the link. i'm pretty sure i did all that but i will give it another shot

 

[kronik42o]

still no luck...i've even integrated the latest sis3112 bios into the nfsd27.bin and used the matching drivings from sis. i was sure i got as far as the first boot from the drive before but now i can't even get windows setup to recognize it for install.

back to old setup...drive is still working inside of windows

do 2.5mm jumpers work for 2mm jumpers? i know seagate switched...i do not have a 2mm jumper...could this be the problem?

 

[SKORPI0]

1. did you set the BIOS to use the SATA drive as the first boot device?
2. is the SATA controller enabled?

 

[MARYBUTTS]

I encountered the same problem.

I have had an NF7-S v2.0 for about 3 years (Barton 2500 o/c to 2200 -solid as a rock) that was recently relegated to the basement as my BitTorrent/eDonkey machine.

A few weeks ago I jumped on a hot deal for a 400GB Seagate SATAII HDD and decided to pop it into the machine to play around with it --- no go.

The bios detects the HDD and will allow a format but Windows will not load.

Seems that a fix may be available by d/l neww Silicon Image SATA drivers and flashing the BIOS -- but I didn't want to go that far , inasmuch as the original setup(RAID 0 , 2X 80GB Maxtors) still works fine.

Now that my curiosity has been piqued , I am toying with the idea of getting one of these things just to see if I can make it work.

 

[SKORPI0]

Solution

The trick was to not only enable the SATA controller, but also to enable the BOOT SATA RAID ROM option in the bios. My incorrect assumption was that you only activate the SATA RAID ROM option if you want to do maintenance on your RAID array, and since I only had a single HDD, I wasn't needing it. However, enabling the SATA RAID ROM option is what makes the SATA drives available for booting, too! You don't need to enter the RAID config (it says to hit Ctrl-S if you want it). Just enable SATA RAID ROM, and now windows boots just fine from the SATA HDD. No driver updates or bios updates were necessary.