Won't detect SATA hard drive

[maztur]

Hi-

I just bought a barebones system so I know it should work fine.

ASUS P4P800 Deluxe
p4 2.6ghz 800fsb
512 pc3200 ddr ram

I just got a 80GB seagate s-ata drive. It's brand new too. Well, the bios is all weird and basically I cant install an OS. Do I have to format the drive? If so, how do I do that when it's not even detecting right. It detects as secondary slave???

Help, I am not too smart in computing

 

[dpm]

To get the Bios to recognise it - firstly check which SATA port you've plugged it into. There should be one labelled SATA 0 and one labelled SATA 1 - you want to plug it into SATA 0.
Then check the jumper on the back of the hard drive to see that its not set to slave. Check the instructions that came with it, or the sticker on the top, to see what the setting should be.

Hopefully the Bios will now detect it right. After this, you do need to format it before you can use it. Download Seagate Discwizard from here , and using either the boot up floppy or boot up CD option, partition and format your hard disk.

Now onto installing windows. Hopefully you got a floppy disk with your drive, labelled something like "SATA driver". Early in the windows XP installation process there is a message asking you to press F6 to install SCSI drivers, press F6, insert the floppy, and follow the instructions.

hope this helps.