Haz567

Hello there, new to the forums. Having some troubles though i'd give this a try. :)

I recieved a 500 GB Sata II hard drive today, and what i want to do with it is have it as a secondary drive to my current 160 GB.

I've set it up within my computer with the SATA power cable and the smaller red one that goes into the motherboard. It goes into the SATA2 port, where my current is in the SATA1. I have turned on the computer, and XP will not recognise this drive as being there. I don't see anything about it in the BIOs setup, and when i go to the disk management screen all i see is my current local C drive.

I rang an IT savvy friend of mine who said it may be because the Hard Drive hasn't gone through an initialision process, and suggested i may have to send it back to the manufacturers. I went around to his place to test it in his computer, which recognised it right away. He set up a quick format partition on it, and told me it would probably work.

I installed it back in and tested it again, and no same problem it doesn't show up. Anybody able to offer any advice of how i could fix this?

If it helps the model is Western Digital 500GB 16 MB SATAII 7200RPM CAVIAR SE16 WD5000AAKS and the motherboard is an Asus A8VE Deluxe Motherboard. Would it be possible that the SATA2 is not supported by my motherboard?

Any advice would be appreciated thankyou.

justpassingby

Not seeing the drive in the bios is quite weird... Sata2 is retro compatible with Sata1 so that shoudn't be the problem. If you have another sata port free on the motherboard try to plug the HDD to it.

Haz567

Well i tried swapping the SATA cable slots around, if only to see if the new drive would show up if it was in primary one by itself and nothing happened. What exactly am i looking for in bios? I might have overlooked it.

justpassingby

Since your system disk is also a sata one, onboard sata is enabled in the bios settings. I don't think there would be another setting to adjust.
There's a page in the bios where you'll see all your devices listed (HDD, cd-rom, ...) and you new disk should appear there. Should also be an option to autodetect the hard drives.

There might be a jumer on your SATAII disk (I believe not all disks have one), try to play with it and see if that changes something :
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...ecteursata.jpg

And yeah, SATAII is not supported by your motherboard. From my experience, a SATAII disk should work on a SATAI motherboard (with the possible jumper set as SATAI), only it will be limited to SATAI speeds, which shouldn't make a big difference. I'll wait for someone else to confirm this however.

crazijoe

SATA may need to be enabled in the BIOS and the drives will not show in the main BIOS screen. The SATA ports are controller by the VIA VT8237R controller.

In the BIOS, under the Advanced menu tab, and under the Onboard Devices Configuration you will need to enable the OnChip SATA. When you save this into the BIOS, another BIOS screen will pop up after the system BIOS. This is for the SATA controller. It will show the drive there.

After you boot into Windows you will possibly need to install the drivers for the SATA controller then Windows will see the drive and you will be able to partition and format it from there.
The drivers should be located on the CD that came with the motherboard.

justpassingby

@crazijoe : I would have said the same thing if his system disk was a PATA, but since it's already a SATA, I believe the onboard SATA is already enabled and the drivers are correctly installed

crazijoe

Sorry, I missed that part.
Does your current SATA drive show in the BIOS? I just want to make sure you are looking in the right place in the BIOS since the SATA drives will not show in the standard MB BIOS.

Haz567

I can't find the exact page, but looking at boot-up options etc i guessed there was no other hard drive detected as it wasn't listed.

There's 8 jumper pins on mine not four, so what pattern would i use?

It did come with jumper pins, i was a bit worried initially as no actually jumper bridge was included in what was sent to me (if thats what you call the thing that connects them). I read from several sources you change modify SATA II to work with SATA I at a reduced speed if you put the jumper bridge in the right place. That could be my issue.

My other hard drive (a WD1600 SATA) also currently has pins in it, could this affect anything? I have a feeling it shouldn't because it is seperate from the other hard drive. Seeing as it is a SATA drive and not SATA II if i remove the pins would it stop it from working?

I've just checked and OnChip SATA is enabled. I've lost the motherboard disc a long time back and have formatted and reinstalled several times since then using a few drivers i've downloaded off the net, is it possible i could of missed a driver somewhere?

I don't think it does, where would the best place to go be?

justpassingby

Should be a sticker on the drive that says where you have to put the jumper for SATAI 1.5Gbps limitation. All you have to do is get a jumper at your local store. At my store you can get one for free as those things are inexpensive.

Don't touch the jumper on your other drive if it's working fine.

crazijoe

According to the manual, to enter the VIA Tech RAID BIOS Utility press the Tab button during the POST upon bootup.

Haz567

I changed the jumpers and got this far, where to next?

Thanks for your help guys.

crazijoe

I would go ahead and convert to basic disk.

Haz567

Done.

Thank you all so much you guys are awesome

crazijoe

Glad you've got it working.