WD Raptor owners: Help please

[gramboh]

Hi there,

I just brought home my new system and have already realized a problem before even powering it on. The hard drive is a WD Raptor serial ATA OEM, unforteuntly WD neglects to include the disk that contains the XP serial ATA drivers with the OEM package. This disk is required for XP install to detect the hard drive. The person at the shop told me they don't stock the retail drive and that they have installed XP on Raptors before and it auto-detects them, however Microsoft's own site says this is not true.

Would a kind Raptor owner mind zipping up the contents of said disk and sending it to me? I have MSN/ICQ/FTP site etc and would be extremely grateful. I searched WD's site but it doesn't appear to be up there yet. Please PM me if you can help.

Thanks a lot for any help, it would be HUGELY appreciated as I want to get my new baby running

 

[LED]

??? mines booted right up and it's an OEM. do you have the jumpers set up correctly, or the SATA on in CMOS?

 

[gramboh]

To be honest I haven't yet, I've read everywhere you needed the driver (even microsoft.com) and I have to swap some stuff out of my current machine into it. I will try now though, I thought the tech was BS'ing me. Sorry going to try right now. Thanks !

 

[T9D]

..

 

[jdogg707]

The only time you would need a disk is if you were Raiding them, which the disk would be provided by the motherboard manufacturer.

 

[gramboh]

Argh wanna know something else stupid? They mounted the SLK-900U (on a P4P800) using the damn clips somehow! The plate and 4 lugs included are still in the damn box, I'm just waiting for this to fall off so I can go in and get a new cpu/video card for free. Fools, don't they read instructions?

 

[GnomeCop]

dude, where did you buy this setup from? sounds kinda messed up. That guy is lying to you if he said winxp autodetects the HD from a frsh install. If no drivers are loaded for the sata controller in cant see sh!t.
The disk you are referring to is supplied with the motherboard. Whatever serial ATA controller the motherboard uses, the appropriate drivers should be supplied on a floppy. You need to press f6 right at the beginning of winxp setup to load the drivers. Then winxp setup will see the drive for installation. The drivers usually come in two versions, raid and non raid.

 

[Blain]

Several times I've had to pull the jumpers off WD drives for them to be recognized. It was very frustrating, until Technonut saved the day for me!

Thanks Again Sonny!

 

[audioslave]

Originally posted by: GnomeCop
dude, where did you buy this setup from? sounds kinda messed up. That guy is lying to you if he said winxp autodetects the HD from a frsh install. If no drivers are loaded for the sata controller in cant see sh!t.
The disk you are referring to is supplied with the motherboard. Whatever serial ATA controller the motherboard uses, the appropriate drivers should be supplied on a floppy. You need to press f6 right at the beginning of winxp setup to load the drivers. Then winxp setup will see the drive for installation. The drivers usually come in two versions, raid and non raid.

Thats strange and Im wondering if that why Im having CRC errors. I didnt press F6 or such thing. XP formated and installed both my raptor and segate sata drives. The Abit manual does however suggest on PG. A-1 to install right after XP loads the Intel Chipset Software Utility from the CD. I installed that and the audio driver.

Like that guy Im not running raid so I didnt even think about it until afterward. There is an Intel Inf50 update I also installed not sure what its for. Looking now at my Device manager I see
- Intel 82801EB Storage Controllers ...
- Primary IDE Channel > Properties > DMA 5
- Secondary IDE Channel > Properties > DMA 5

BUT the drivers listed for those last 2 are microsoft and dated 7/2001
Is that what your guys says?

I did however get a disk labled "Sata Driver Disk" It contains the same files you can get off of Abits ftp. Thing is theres 2 brands, one from Intel and one set from SII. First I didnt know which one to choose if I were to pick one, second I thought I didnt need them - that they were for raid setups only and or a add in card. Do I need to install one of these sets?

While Im asking, on the subject of memory, do you Need to install them in Pairs or will one 512MB dimm work? I just got 1 512MB HyperX 3200 and threw that in slot one but Im reading that might not be wise.

thx

 

[audioslave]

ah man no one answered

 

[TronX]

Originally posted by: audioslave

Originally posted by: GnomeCop
dude, where did you buy this setup from? sounds kinda messed up. That guy is lying to you if he said winxp autodetects the HD from a frsh install. If no drivers are loaded for the sata controller in cant see sh!t.
The disk you are referring to is supplied with the motherboard. Whatever serial ATA controller the motherboard uses, the appropriate drivers should be supplied on a floppy. You need to press f6 right at the beginning of winxp setup to load the drivers. Then winxp setup will see the drive for installation. The drivers usually come in two versions, raid and non raid.

Thats strange and Im wondering if that why Im having CRC errors. I didnt press F6 or such thing. XP formated and installed both my raptor and segate sata drives. The Abit manual does however suggest on PG. A-1 to install right after XP loads the Intel Chipset Software Utility from the CD. I installed that and the audio driver.

Like that guy Im not running raid so I didnt even think about it until afterward. There is an Intel Inf50 update I also installed not sure what its for. Looking now at my Device manager I see
- Intel 82801EB Storage Controllers ...
- Primary IDE Channel > Properties > DMA 5
- Secondary IDE Channel > Properties > DMA 5

BUT the drivers listed for those last 2 are microsoft and dated 7/2001
Is that what your guys says?

I did however get a disk labled "Sata Driver Disk" It contains the same files you can get off of Abits ftp. Thing is theres 2 brands, one from Intel and one set from SII. First I didnt know which one to choose if I were to pick one, second I thought I didnt need them - that they were for raid setups only and or a add in card. Do I need to install one of these sets?

While Im asking, on the subject of memory, do you Need to install them in Pairs or will one 512MB dimm work? I just got 1 512MB HyperX 3200 and threw that in slot one but Im reading that might not be wise.

thx

If your mother board has DC (Dual Channel) then adding in pairs would boost the speed of the ram.
Otherwise you can use your single 3200 with no problems, you just don't get the added speed
boost.

 

[OverVolt]

Okay, this SATA driver thing is very confusing.

With my Raptors in RAID0 (it was rele hard to get WinXP on) But when i hit F6 when prompted it just kept on going through setup until it got to the partitioning, then it asked for the drivers n on my other computer i downloaded them off Asus's website for my RAID controller ( i think thats what they mean by SATA drivers since WinXP supports SATA).

It said my drivers weren't signed blah blah n i hit continue anyway and i was up n runnin after setup!

 

[Compddd]

for my Intel D875PBZ system I just hooked the 2 SATA drives up, enabled intel raid in bios, configured the raid volume before XP setup started up, pressed F6 when I saw first screen, put diskett with intel SATA driver in, it read it, installed the driver and XP, and boom, all finished, everything works fine

I did this with 2 Raptors and 2 Baracuddas

 

[millsy]

what stripe size are you using with the 2 Raptors??
i heard 16k was best

 

[GnomeCop]

Originally posted by: millsy
what stripe size are you using with the 2 Raptors??
i heard 16k was best

I dunno, it kinda depends on what programs you are running. for me 32k stripe was the best and fastest all round. (Finally got 32k setting to work)

Originally posted by: Compddd
for my Intel D875PBZ system I just hooked the 2 SATA drives up, enabled intel raid in bios, configured the raid volume before XP setup started up, pressed F6 when I saw first screen, put diskett with intel SATA driver in, it read it, installed the driver and XP, and boom, all finished, everything works fine

I did this with 2 Raptors and 2 Baracuddas

Exactly, thats how its done, very clear