SATA Installation question

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: BruHawco
If I go into the device manager, and click on SCSI controllers, "Silicon Image Sil 3112 SATARaid Controller". That would be what I hook the drive into. The driver's date for that controller is May 30th 2003, while there's a newer driver listed at October 29 2003, but it won't let me update to that for some weird reason. And Nitromullet, I don't have both power cables hooked up.

That answered my question as to whether the controller was enabled or not. Short of re-seating the SATA cables (power and data), which you probably have done a gazillion times by now, I'm all out of ideas. You might just have a bad drive....

 

[johnjkr1]

yeah, ive never played with that board, but i'm sure the serial ata controller has a bios you can go into and check settings

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: BruHawco
If I go into the device manager, and click on SCSI controllers, "Silicon Image Sil 3112 SATARaid Controller". That would be what I hook the drive into. The driver's date for that controller is May 30th 2003, while there's a newer driver listed at October 29 2003, but it won't let me update to that for some weird reason. And Nitromullet, I don't have both power cables hooked up.

Only hook up ONE power cable, otherwise you might fry the drive.

 

[BruHawco]

Alright, update
It';s very possible that the hard drive is fired, cause I remember my bro hooking up both power cables on it's first start up. Is there anyway to test whether or not the hard drive is dead. I felt both hard drives in my comp. The IDE is warm, while the SATA is at normal room temp, but then again, the IDE drive is the one doing all the work at the moment. Anyone got an suggestions?

 

[nitromullet]

The problem does appear to lie with the drive itself since the controller appears to be on. The only way that I can think of testing this is to plug it into another system that supports SATA, but I am assuming that you don't have access to that.

 

[BruHawco]

Yeah, at the moment I don't
I'm thinking about going out, and getting the exact HD since there is the possibility that the one I have now is fried. If the new one has the smae problem, then we know that it ain't the HD.

 

[BruHawco]

Alright
Good news is, the HD isn't fried, and I finally and the device was detected. However, the device was detected by the SATARaid bios, and not the regular bios. Pretty confusing eh.

 

[BruHawco]

When I evnter the SATA bios, it has 5 options.
1) Create Raid Set
2) Delete Raid Set
3) Rebuild Raid Sets
4) Resolve Conflicts
5) Low Level Format

The only one I can choose is LLF (Since I'm not runnning a raid set; one SATA drive with one IDE drive)
The drive does get detected at the SATA Bios, but not when I go into the regular bios and try to set up the disk boot sequence. Any suggestions guys?

 

[nitromullet]

I found this response to a simlar post on another message board.

In the BIOS advanced chipset settings you will find a list of boot options, the first will boot device will be set to floppy, set the second boot device to CDROM, and the third boot device to SCSI. The BIOS recognizes the onboard SATA controller as a SCSI Device. Save and exit from the BIOS and you should be ready to go. Good luck!

Not sure if this is true, but it can't hurt to try.

The original thread is here.

 

[BruHawco]

Alright I tried what it said but it didn't work
When I enter bios, it list my 20 gig IDE as the primary Master, my CD-Rom as the primary slave, but the 80 gig SATA HD is not listed at all... the way I got it set up, it should be the secondary master. But it's not showing up.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: BruHawcoAlright I tried what it said but it didn't work
When I enter bios, it list my 20 gig IDE as the primary Master, my CD-Rom as the primary slave, but the 80 gig SATA HD is not listed at all... the way I got it set up, it should be the secondary master. But it's not showing up.

You are incorrect. It will not show up as your secondary master. The SATA controller is completely seperate from your IDE controller and anything attached to it will not show up in your mobo BIOS. The SATA controller is an add on controller, it is built into your motherboard but not part of your southbridge, so it is not "native" to your chipset. This is fine, but it means that the SATA drives will not show up in your regular BIOS. Your SATA drive will show up under your SATA BIOS and no where else. Thus, to be able to boot from the SATA drive, you have to be able to boot off of the SATA controller (which in turn will locate the SATA drive).

 

[BruHawco]

Alright
Things are become a lot more clearer, thanks
The drive is being found under my SATA bios, but:

A) I'm not sure if it's booting up

and/or

B) I'm not sure if it's just not being detected by Win98

How do you go about booting off the SATA controller?

 

[nitromullet]

I found this at: http://www.asus.com/support/faq/qanda.aspx?KB_ID=84304

Does A7N8X Deluxe allow you to boot from SATA hard drive?

SATA HDDs have a higher priority than IDE devices. Thus, if you install OS in SATA HDDs, system will automatically boot up from SATA HDDs. You don't have to set up anything in BIOS settings.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: BruHawco
Alright
Things are become a lot more clearer, thanks
The drive is being found under my SATA bios, but:

A) I'm not sure if it's booting up

and/or

B) I'm not sure if it's just not being detected by Win98

How do you go about booting off the SATA controller?

Do you have anything installed on the SATA drive? WinXP, Win98? If not, you need to do this before it will boot. Chances are, in order to install WinXP on your SATA drive you will have to create a floppy with your SATA drivers on it, and hit F6 at the beginning of the install to allow you to load these drivers (you can not load them from a CD). There should be a Readme somewhere in your SATA drivers that tells you which files to put on the floppy.

 

[johnjkr1]

also, the serial ata drive must be formatted before it will show up in win 98.....If you want the new serial ata drive to be your primary boot drive, all you have to do is temporarily unplug the ide drive...set the serial ata as the first boot device and set up win98....then, when its done, you can plug the ide drive back in and copy over the stuff you want

 

[BruHawco]

Thanks a lot for your help guys
I finally got everything set up, not using Win98, but that's besides the point. I'd probably still be staring at my computer not knowing what to do if it wasn't for your help. Thanks a lot guys.