SATA problem on ASUS P4PE, please help

[DrMik3y2]

I just purchased a Western Digital 74gb Raptor drive. I attempted to install it today, but failed miserably. Here is what happend:

First I hooked up the drive to my drive bay, plugged in the power, hooked up the SATA connector to my Primary SATA port on my mobo. I then attempted to install Windows. After the install CD booted, it said that it could not find a hard drive connected. So I went back to my BIOS to look to see if there was a SATA configuration I needed to click on/off or something. I could not find one though. So then as I attempted to install again, after the POST test I realized that the "FastTrack Controller" (ASUS RAID controller I believe) was blinking, so I hit CTRL+F to enter that. When inside the program I auto-setup an array. I reboot and then attempted to install windows again, but the same thing happened. I then checked on another forum and some people had a similar problem with the ASUS P4C800 mobo. The guys on the forum said to enter the BIOS and change the SATA configuration to enabled and to aslo enable the SATA BOOTROM. I decided to check my BIOS one more time just in case I missed something. Well I did find what they were talking about, sortof. In my BIOS under the PCI Configuration menu, there is a selection to enable ATA configuration. And if that is enabled then you can also enable the BOOT feature. This also did nothing for me though, and I'm assuming that's because it's for PCI configuration and as my SATA is directly on the mobo and not on a PCI card it would have no bearing. I really have no idea what's going on and would greatly appreciate some help. Thanks in advance!

Comp Stats:

ASUS P4PE mobo
Intell P4 2.4ghz
512 Kingston DDR333
On Board Sound
ATI Radeon 9800 AIW
WD 80gb IDE HDD
WD 100gb IDE HDD
WD 74gb Raptor (hopefully)
NEC 52x CD-R/RW IDE Drive
Dell 16x DVD-ROM Drive

 

[helpmeout]

When you started the Windows install, did you get a message to push "F6" if you had third party drivers to install? That's where you install the SATA drivers from a floppy. DFrivers should have come with the MOBO, either on a floppy already or on a CD. You need to extract the SATA drivers from the MOBO CD if that's where they are, and put them on a floppy.

 

[DrMik3y2]

Yes I did hit f6 at the windows install, as I thought that might be the problem. I didn't realize it would be the mobo manufacturer diskette, for some reason I thought it would be drivers for the actual hdd and I couldn't find any at westerndigital.com I just looked on asus.com and there is an updated PROMISE Controller driver, which is the SATA/RAID controller apparently. I'll throw this on a floppy and try it! Thanks for the help, I really appreciate... and I'll post again if there are any more problems!

Also, once I have windows installed will I be able to install Linux on this hdd, or do I need drivers specific to Linux?

 

[DrMik3y2]

Everything works great now, thanks so much for the help! Installed Windows XP Pro in 9 minutes!!!

 

[helpmeout]

So, would you mind sharing the breakthrough? How did you get it working? Was it the controller drivers?