Trouble Installing OS on Sata Drive

[hackmole]

Installing a new hard drive is a lot more complicated these days.

I disconnected my IDE drive and installed two brand new 1 terabyte Samsung spinpoint SATA2 drives model HD-HD103SJ but didn't have a SATA connection to my board so I got and installed a ST Labs Sata 150 PCI controller card and connected it to the drives with the data and power cables.

On startup, my ASUS P4S333-M motherboard (Approx. 2002) does not recognize the Samsung drives. But the controller card has it's own bios and let me set it up in Raid 1 because I want a fail-safe system. The controller card recognizes the SATA drives but my motherboard does not. I tried switching out the card to another slot with no luck. I disconnected all other devices except the hard drives and still had no luck. I tried setting it up in Raid 0 with no luck in recognizing the drives in bios.

When I continue to boot up the drives so I can format them, it just gets stuck in the middle of the boot. The drive comes with only 2 jumpers not 4 as indicated in the manual. I tried covering the left jumper but that only made it worse.

I then got the idea that maybe the drives are actually working but that it is just not registering them in bios since my bios was created in 2002 and has not had any upgrades.

So I put in the Windows XP cd and it started installing but then got to a point where it wanted the ST Labs Sata controller card drivers. XP wants those drivers installed from a floppy and doesn't give you any other option. The problem is that my floppy drive is somehow defective and it is not the drive itself because I have four spare ones which I all tried with no luck. I installed the IDE cables positioning the red line on the outside both on the mother board and the drive. I made very sure they were well secured inside the slots. I spent at least 8 hours trying different things to make the floppy work but it just won't and it never has.

I then installed my old IDE hard drive and booted from it and it recognized the new SATA drives. I used disk management to format and partition the new drives and made the 30 gig operating partition on the new drive the active one. I transfered documents back and forth to the new raid drive and it works and they are recognized but they just aren't recognized in bios. I didn't think that was possible but it looks like it is.

I now have to move on and find a different way to get XP or possibly Windows 7 on the SATA drives basically to get the drivers on there without using a floppy drive. So I have the following questions.

1. Can I clone XP on my current IDE drive in which XP is on a 12 gig partition. That means to me creating a partition image and then putting it on the new drive. But that confuses me because I don't know if the 12 gig partition is going to be put inside the 30 gig partition of the new drive. Or will it just transfer everything over without the partition barrier.

2. Would it be better to move up to Windows 7. Does Windows 7 include the drivers of the ST Labs Sata controller card or at least would Windows 7 let you install the drivers by flash drive or CD.

3. Should I just get a new barebones computer (since I already have the hard drives) so I don't have all these weird problems. But then would a new computer have IDE connections for the two DVDs I have or do they only have SATA connections these days. And then what about my ATI video card which is in an AGP slot. I can go up to $300 for a new barebones but that's it. I have too many expenses on my car and other things. The only other reason I would want to upgrade my Pentium 4 1.6ghz is so I can render video faster. If I can't get through all these problems to use the new drives in a Raid 1 format, maybe getting a barebone system is the best solution.

4. Any other solutions are welcome.

It's all a BIG headache to me because I want to do work on a computer not spend all these hours fixing them or an hour writing this question. It used to be so simple to add a new drive.

 

[Fardringle]

Most cloning programs will let you copy the data to different partition sizes as long as the destination partition will hold all of the data, so going from 12 GB to 30 GB isn't a problem.

However, cloning Windows to the new drives probably wouldn't work since you still need to have the SATA adapter drivers installed in order for Windows to be able to see and boot from the drives attached to the adapter.

You could try installing the drivers for the card in the existing Windows installation, then clone Windows to the new drives, then disconnect the IDE drive and see if it will boot properly.

 

[mlc]

regarding your floppy not working, it may simply not be enabled in the BIOS..

when installing the controller card.. you may need to just install the card alone , with nothing attached to it. .and go through the windows install process.. using the drivers provided.. Then after that, you reboot, and check device manager to see if the card was recognized, and operational (i.e. no conflicts or problems).. and if so , then you shut down and attach the drivers to it...

Once the driver is recognized, etc.. do a fresh install of windows, at which time it will ask you to partition the disk... windows 7 probably isn't a good bet on that machine, due to memory and processor requirements, xp should be fine....

If you go the route of a new build/machine, it will be tight if impossible for $300, it will really depend on your needs. Your AGP video card would be useless with a new build, so do yourself a favor, and don't even think about planning around that. You can pop a cheap PCI Express card in a new build for as little as $30 bucks, and upgrade it later as you have more cash. Any new system should have the IDE connectors as well as the SATA ports....
Check someone like DELL to see how much their most basic systems run.. and what they come with. The other option is order and build the components yourself from an online site, like NEWEGG.COM, but the cost is usually more than a budget package from someone like dell, when you consider they throw in the copy of windows, psu , etc.. but you get what you pay for...

You can probably pick up a decent AMD X3 processor, motherboard & DDR3 memory for around 200, and then you'd need a graphics card, case and psu, plus copy of windows (if you dont have one you can use)... So it may be doable.. depending on your graphics needs...

 

[Fallen Kell]

Any new system should have the IDE connectors as well as the SATA ports....

Actually, no, that is not the case anymore. With the new Intel Sandy Bridge, a lot of motherboards are no longer including the legacy IDE connector anymore, as SATA on DVD/Optical drives became more standard about 2 years ago. If you still need IDE, you really do have to look at the specs on new motherboards. Now grant it you might not be going to Sandy Bridge with $300, since motherboard/CPU/RAM will probably be in the $350-400 range (if you get the H67 chipset motherboard, you can use the integrated graphics card until you get some more cash and can afford to upgrade to a PCI-e card later).

 

[mlc]

my bad... he's right about the newer form factor....

there are some decent AMD X4 bundles that include a cpu, motherboard, case, RAM and PSU for $250..

so all you'd need to add is your hdd and dvd drives, and still leave you 50$ to pick up a graphics card.. if that a route you want to consider.. Just doublecheck for the IDE ports, as mentioned....