WD raptor manual guide

[edmundoab]

Hey guys, im new to SATA.

I want to maintain my current 2 HDD which are IDE interface but want to use this WD Raptor as my Primary HDD.

I'm using a A7N8X- Deluxe Rev 2 ASUS board.

Already have the red sata data cable with me right now.

can anyone guide me on installation and do I need to set any jumpers to enable this?
Any help out there?

from the looks of it I can use legacy power supply to power up this drive.
Will there be any advantage using SATA power?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: edmundoab

Will there be any advantage using SATA power?

hot swapable, possibly lower power consumption

 

[mitchafi]

First thing you need to do is download the SATA drivers for your motherboard and make a floppy. It will probably be a makedisk.exe program, just insert a disk and execute the program and you've got your drivers. As for actually installing it, just plug it in and jumper it to master. Your IDE drives should not have to be touched. To install windows on the SATA drive, do everything normally except at the beginning when it asks if you have any SCSI devices to install press F6. Insert the floppy and follow the directions on screen. That is pretty much it. If I explained this vaguely or incorrectly, someone please correct me.

 

[JBT]

While installing your OS make sure you unplugg the IDE drives. It can cause some problems with them plugged in. Such as weird drive labels ect. Also you may have to move the SATA jumper on your board to turn on the SATA BIOS. Visit The NForcers Forum for more info and tips, you can also download the latest SATA BIOS from there in the Asus forum to improve performance of your SATA drives.

 

[mrweirdo]

Originally posted by: mitchafi
First thing you need to do is download the SATA drivers for your motherboard and make a floppy. It will probably be a makedisk.exe program, just insert a disk and execute the program and you've got your drivers. As for actually installing it, just plug it in and jumper it to master. Your IDE drives should not have to be touched. To install windows on the SATA drive, do everything normally except at the beginning when it asks if you have any SCSI devices to install press F6. Insert the floppy and follow the directions on screen. That is pretty much it. If I explained this vaguely or incorrectly, someone please correct me.

I did that with a few computer system I built recently for a buisness that needed high end machines. I left out the floppy because it was though of something as not needed since it wont be used at all and its legacy hardware, boy was that a mistake had to rip the drive out of my comp and put it in the new comp to get windows to install on the SATA drive.
*sigh why doesnt microsoft allow you to load drivers off of other devices besides the floppy during setup :|

 

[Shinare]

Its times like that when an investment in a USB floppy might be worth it.

 

[Q2Student]

Also ensure that in your boot sequence, you select the SCSI option in BIOS, or the MOBO will always go to the IDE drives for startup.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: Q2Student
Also ensure that in your boot sequence, you select the SCSI option in BIOS, or the MOBO will always go to the IDE drives for startup.

*or SATA if your motherboard specifies it.

Otherwise SCSI.

That got me on my NF7-S...I was used to selecting SCSI to use my ATA controller, and I thought it would be the same with the onboard SATA, but there was another option.

 

[Q2Student]

I have the same board, Jagec, and know it doesn't have SATA as an option (that would be far too easy, of course! lol).

 

[SUOrangeman]

> Its times like that when an investment in a USB floppy might be worth it.

With a little effort, you can embed SATA (and other) drives into WinXP (and proabaly Win2K/2K3) install CDs without ever having a floppy.

For storage drivers, ... http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8892

For other drives and apps, http://unattended.msfn.org

-SUO

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: JBT
While installing your OS make sure you unplugg the IDE drives. It can cause some problems with them plugged in. Such as weird drive labels ect. Also you may have to move the SATA jumper on your board to turn on the SATA BIOS. Visit The NForcers Forum for more info and tips, you can also download the latest SATA BIOS from there in the Asus forum to improve performance of your SATA drives.

I like the unplug your IDE drives advice.

I wish i had known that the second last time i reformatted, as amazingly, somehow Windows managed to completely wipe out up my IDE drive (long story).

Anyway, unplug the IDEs & all will be well.

 

[nitromullet]

i just built an A7N8X based system with the OS on the SATA HD last week. To get the drivers, I simply copied all the .inf files out of the SATA/drivers/ folder on the Asus install cd to a floppy, and it worked fine.

Its times like that when an investment in a USB floppy might be worth

Interesting idea, but this might not work. I installed a 8-in-1 floppy/media card reader that plugs into the floppy port and a usb header on the mobo. On the first install, Windows named the 2 media card readers drives C: and D:, my cdrom E, and the SATA drive F:. To resolve this problem, I unplugged the reader from the usb header and re-installed Windows (Windows won't let you re-letter the system drive after install). The SATA HD was correctly named C: and the cdrom was D:. After that I plugged the reader back into the usb header, and they showed up as E: and F:.

 

[boomerang]

Do not mess with any jumpers on that Raptor. Leave it as is.

 

[edmundoab]

ok, I've gone ahead to install the raptor with the drivers given by the Asus Mobo bundle.

However, now that I discover the raptor is labelled as HDD-1

while my primary IDE is still HDD-0

everything I boot up, it automatically uses the Primary IDE.
When I change my first boot seek to HDD-1. it says

" Hal.dll file not found, please reinstall a copy of windows to fix this error "

so, O'm kinda stuck here.
But in windows I do see my drive being attached as Drive " G "
and I can access it without any problems.

 

[Scifience]

I know this may seem like a dumb question, but did you install Windows on the new drive yet?

Also, did you disconnect your existing IDE drives before installing Windows on the Raptor?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: mitchafi

*sigh why doesnt microsoft allow you to load drivers off of other devices besides the floppy during setup :|

Click me and learn how to install SATA drivers during windows setup without ever using a floppy

 

[edmundoab]

Originally posted by: Scifience
I know this may seem like a dumb question, but did you install Windows on the new drive yet?

Also, did you disconnect your existing IDE drives before installing Windows on the Raptor?

ok, I was too excited before I could wait for Anandtech members to reply to my message,
so I had them both attached while installing the Raptor.

Yes, I have WinXP installed in the Drive already.