timW

I was hoping someone could help me with a hard drive issue I’m having on my computer.

I recently purchased a 200GB Maxtor ATA HD to supplement the 80GB SATA HD I’ve had on board my computer since I put it together a couple of years ago. I followed the directions when I installed it, but as far as my computer is concerned the unit doesn’t exist. The instructions told me to use the disk provided to make the installation, but when I called up the program it only recognized the 80GB HD already present. I then tried using windows’ own hardware installation utility to see if it would do the job, but again the 200GB wasn’t recognized.

Is there a conflict between the present HD being SATA, while the other is an ATA unit connected directly to the Mobo with the ATA connector cable?

I also set up the 200 GB HD as a slave unit, as I basically want to use it for storage purposes, and I wondered if that may be where the problem emanates from.

I tried going into BIOS in accordance with the instructions, but again I could find nothing to make the computer recognize that a new unit had been installed. The instructions say to highlight the ‘auto-detect’ feature and press enter, but I couldn’t find anything in BIOS that matched up to this.

I haven’t tinkered around with the RAID settings by the way, if that helps.

Sorry to sound such a dunce, but if someone could point the way out of this mess for me I’d certainly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance………Tim

ASUS P4P800-E deluxe Mobo
Intel Pentium 4 3.0E Prestcott
Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200 SATA 150
Radeon 9600 126MB DDR AGP
Kingston DDR 400 SDRAM (1GB)
Creative sound blaster 128 PCI
Optorite DVD burner
Thermaltake Purepower W0009R ATX 420 Watt
Maxtor Ultra 200GB 7200 ATA 133

Doby

Hi Tim,

If this drive is the only one on the ide cable then it needs to be set as master and on the end connector of the cable

Done_Fishin

Go into BIOS and select the first page where the clock adjustment and everything is shown

look at the Hard drive selection, make sure that all are set to AUTO. You may need to "open" the setting by moving down to the selection and pressing the "enter" key.
If it doesn't show anything try hitting search button .. sorry haven't got the manual in frnt ofme so can't remember the actual wording.
Normally, whether master or slave providing you have selected the right box to open, it should find the drive.
Hopefully you remembered to put the power cable in too!
I have found on my P4S800D that the drives are recognised regardless of whether a Master is present or not. The drives are also accessible from XP in this way.
It would be preferable though if you change it to the Master position.

btw, windows won't recognise it until you go into administrative tools, computer manangement, disk management, look for the drive which will be shown but unallocated and unformatted.
right click with your mouse on the drive and click format.
Hope you have at least SP1 before you do this.

just realised that you are using Win2K, check that your uptodate with service packs, I am not aware which SP it is you'll need to support LBA48.

timW

Hi again,
Well, I’ve been backwards and forwards with this problem, thought I’d solved it, and am now more or less back to square one!

I discovered what my initial problem was this morning. Having made the recommended adjustment to the unit to switch it back to the ‘master’ setting I found that it still didn’t work, and I began to suspect that I may have done something wrong when I plugged it in. Sure enough when I checked I discovered I’d plugged the HD into the RAID connecter on the board instead of the spare IDE insert (I was lying under my desk in semi dark with a small flashlight in my mouth when I plugged it in initially, so give me a break!) and once I’d moved the cable over everything came good, more or less. The system finally recognized the HD, I was able to install it, but then ran into the problem that the size of the HD (200GB) caused the operating system to have a fit.

I’d been led to believe that with SP1 on board I wouldn’t have a problem, but try as might all I could do was make the system accept the max. partition of 137GB, regardless of a few different things I tried.

I finally took the option of ducking out to buy an Ultra ATA/133 IDE RAID controller card to put in my system, but despite all my efforts over three hours I’ve been unable to convince the system to acknowledge the HD’s existence, even though I’ve successfully loaded in the appropriate drivers that came with the card.

I don’t know if it’s the cause of the problem, or a symptom of it, but one thing I have noticed is that the device manager shows a question mark next to ‘Raid controller’ with a message that states ‘the drivers for this device are not installed (code 28)’.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance………..Tim

XP-pro + SP1 & SP2
ASUS P4P800-E deluxe Mobo
Intel Pentium 4 3.0E Prestcott
Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu
Seagate Barracuda 80GB 7200 SATA 150
Radeon 9600 126MB DDR AGP
Kingston DDR 400 SDRAM (1GB)
Creative sound blaster 128 PCI
Optorite DVD burner
Thermaltake Purepower W0009R ATX 420 Watt
Maxtor Ultra 200GB 7200 ATA 133
Ultra ATA/133 IDE RAID controller

timW

to 'Done fishin' - I should point out that I did follow your advice and went to disk management, but it too doesn't recognize that any other HD exists.

Done_Fishin

I confused your system at first with XP and thought "Service Packs"!

I have a feeling that your problem is service packs but that it may well mean that your SP1 isn't sufficient. I would suggest you check at M$ for the LBA48 Support for Win2K.
I am surprised that your PCI card didn't help you either, but again perhaps , since Win2K is an older system there are no drivers avalable for your current level. I am assuming that the card was purchased as plug'n'play with no install disk.
Thinking about your problem with the plug in card , perhaps you need to have plug'n'play enabled in BIOS otherwise how will your BIOS know that it's available, or maybe it's from the removable devices .. one of the settings must allow BIOS to register your drive as the PC boots so that Win2K will see it too.

Done_Fishin

Will this help...

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;305098

linderman

Hello:


you fellas are hitting all around the problem at hand (admirably I will say)


You need to have Service Pack 3 or higher Intergrated into your Windows Disk to see the whole 200gig drive.

Win 2000 has up to service Pack 4 I would simpley install service pack four to your operating system and then you should be able to use the entire size of your disk

FWIW: you can add SP-4 to your Win 2000 install CD for future use

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...ng-win-cd.html

note the steps also include Win 2000 with SP-4

now: onto your controller problem; which by the way you dont need
but ohhh well the yellow exclamation mark next to raid controllers indicates your PCI slot controller does not have the drivers installed for it.
(its common for the hardware & bios to call IDE controller careds either SCSI or Raid; and it does not hurt to have that anomaly, once the driver gets installed all will be well)

who knows; the addition of Service Pack 4 will probally help that situtation too!

go here for SP-4

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000...4/default.mspx

(look for the little "go" button next to the small language box >>>> middle of web page towards right hand side)

BTW: Win 2000 is a very stable OS with plenty of life left in it; so dont think you have an outdated platform it will do all Win XP will do; with many a few less bumps & jiggles

timW

I don't know where everyone got the idea I have win 2000 on board. I've had XP on my computer fo some time. It has been some time since I posted on here, so perhaps someone picked up on an old posting and went with it from there. My fault perhaps, as I was so intent on listing hardware and neglected to point out the operating system on board.

As for the problem with the card, I have since discovered that it was not seated firmly enough in the PCI slot - it's the only slot left, and it was such a squeeze to get it in I that wasn't sure it had seated properly.

Problem is that it hasn't helped matters at all. I now find that my system moves along at the pace of a dying snail - it takes XP about 20 minutes to boot up, and the cursor stutters across the screen like you wouldn't believe.

I'm practically at the point of giving up on getting full use of the HD and just accepting the 137GB limitation I initially ran up against (which oddly enough turned out to be only 120GB when I looked at the drive later on 'my computer'.

As a couple of people have pointed out, this is all rather surprising to me as I fully expected the system to readily accept the HD at full capacity.

Is there anything in BIOS I perhaps need to change?

And I do get an error message on the intitial black screen at start up that says 'device not found!', if that means anything to anyone. I've always had an error message at start up as well which says 'BIOS not installed', which someone on this forum told me ages ago is nothing to worry about. But again, I do wonder if this may be a contributing problem to this situation.

The other odd thing I don't understand is why the system has such a hard time with an onboard HD that's over 137GB capacity yet has no problems dealing with the external 200GB HD I use for periodically backing my system up via a firewire connection.

Thanks........Tim

Done_Fishin

Tim
please look just under your name in your posts and you will see where we got the idea about Win2K ..

Second XP requires minimum SP1 as I started to say earlier before seeing your system OS by your signature, perhaps you'd like to update that too and let us know what SP you have installed if any.
If the card wasn't seated properly in the slot there is a possibility of electrical damage to the card or the motherboard.
Remove the card and see if normal speed returns. I have found on older systems that an inappropriate card in a PCI slot can force the bus speed to a lower value. That was howver back in the days of an AMD 75MHz and the SCSI card I inserted dropped it to 50MHz. I wouldn't have expected that to happen on Modern boards and cards.

timW

Hi again,
I had to laugh. I don't know how that reference to Win 2000 got attached to my name - I've never noticed it before! The only time I've had 2000 was on an old laptop, which I referrred to at one stage in a couple of emails, and I thought that must have been where people got the idea from! Sorry for the confusion it caused! I've made the correction at any rate.

Yes, I did tinker around with detaching the unit and starting up again, and everything goes back to normal, though that error message of 'device not found!' pops up at the beginning. But as soon as I plug it back in again it's back to the stuttering cursor and snail-like performance.

I should have pointed out that this behaviour didn't start until I actually loaded in the drivers for the unit. When I first placed it on board and started up eveything was fine, the system recognized that I had new hardware, and I went through the reccomended procedures to load in the drivers - ti was then that everything went nuts. The system loaded in the driver automatically, but could the wrong one have gone in? Perhaps I should delete it and start again?

I have read round and about that some ASUS boards have a problem with certain IDE controller cards - could that be the issue?

Thanks.........Tim

Done_Fishin

Like I said before, when a card doesn't seat properly it can get damaged or cause damage.
You still don't say whether you have SP installed, suggest that you remove the card, update XP and try the drive direct again.

Raffaz

If your still having problems with the 137gb limit, then why not just setup a couple partitions on your new drive? I know its not a fix as such but its a decent workaround.

timW

Latest update!

I got sick and tired of all the trouble involved with the card and figured it must have a conflict with the ASUS board, so I took it out. I then decided to just go back to the former setup of having the 200GB HD connected to the spare IDE socket and just live with the 137GB capacity enforced upon me. Easier said than done – XP just kept getting stuck at the intro page (with the little blue thing going left to right constantly) and just stayed there. I tried entering via safe mode and all I kept getting was the blue screen. If I disconnected the new HD everything was fine.

Why, when I finally got the system to accept it before within its limitations, am I now having problems – nothing ever seems to be easy when it comes to installing new hardware, it always has to be a trial! I tried doing a system restore to a date prior to the initial installation of the HD, thinking that perhaps putting the IDE controller card may have screwed some settings up, but that didn’t work either. I’m at my wits end trying to figure out what to do. From simply trying to increase the storage space on my computer, I’ve spent the better part of three days screwing around and seemingly going backwards – at least two days ago I had 137GB of extra capacity – now I can’t even get that back!

Very frustrated!

By the way, 'done fishing' , I mentioned in passing in my second post that I had SP1 on board, when I said I couldn't understand why I was running into problems when I'd been led to believe that having SP1 would negate any size problems with the HD. I also have SP2 on the system. As an aside, are you Greek, or just living in Greece? I ask out of curiousity, as I'm of Greek background myself.

Done_Fishin

I've been trying to think what could be going on here and re-reading what has been said and done. I am wondering whether the BIOS is trying to put it into RAID mode despite the fact that you haven't actually asked it too.

I know that windows requires a ICH driver in order to recognise the drive as a SATA and at least in my case that meant installing a RAID driver (I also have ASUS mobo) However I only have one SATA drive ..
might be time for me to RTFM again ...

(married to a greek, been here 19 years!)

Done_Fishin

Theres a manual on the ASUS site about ICH5R ..
theres info on setting up raid, plus at the end of how to set up raid in BIOS, this note

pdf is here http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/ICH5R.pdf

linderman

to get rid of the "device not found, bios is not loaded message"


this is referring to the onboard Promise or raid controller is trying to find its calf >>>>


enter the bios; go into the advanced section then disable the Promise Raid Controller

save & exit bios

or have a read here too

http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...installed.html


BTW: I have used that board myself as well as sold hordes of them! they are rock solid, you should soon get your woes under control!
what is the bios revision of the mother board ?????