AnthonyStargate

I remember a bumper sticker that read – Spare me from yet another learning experience.

My desktop computer has 3 hard drives, 1 is an IDE hard drive and the other 2 are SATA drives. When I boot, all 3 hard drives show up in the long winded messages and I can see all 3 hard drives listed in the BIOS, but Windows XP can only see the IDE hard drive. So at least the power and data cables to the SATA drives are good, plus I can feel the motors spinning in the SATA drives.

I put each SATA drive in a case and hooked them up to my notebook computer and each hard drive worked just fine. I also connected the case to my desktop computer with a USB connector, and both SATA drives worked fine this way as well.

The operating system is Windows XP with service pack 2. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-VT600P-RZ. One of the SATA drives is a Samsung, the rest are all Seagate. I am not running RAID and this computer does not have an internet connection.

In Device Manger these entries are together and they all have yellow question marks.

? Other devices
? Multimedia Audio Controller -- That’s my sound card.
? Multimedia Audio Controller
? Multimedia Controller -- That’s my video capture card.
? RAID Controller

I think this is a separate problem, probably Windows XP lost the drivers for the sound card and video capture card because they are on one of the SATA drives.

I downloaded a driver from Gigabyte called motherboard_driver_chipset_via_4in1.exe. It extracted okay, but when I ran setup.exe, it just ran some type of power management utility. There was also a program called via4in1.exe. When I clicked on that, nothing happened. I downloaded the driver from a different site, but got the same results.

I also tried connecting just a SATA hard drive and installing Windows, but the setup program said it could not find any hard drives.

The Gigabyte website also has a SATA RAID driver. The only thing I can think to do is use that driver and see what happens. (I really don’t want to buy a SATA PCI card.)

Even if this is something that’s not fixable, I would like to know the cause of the problem.

Thank you for your assistance

Rob 1

You need to go into disk management for windows to install the drives properly.

Right click my computer > on the left side, Disk management >
That should give you a popup where you can initialize the drives.

If the drives are new, you'll want to format them of course.

You want to select basic volume, unless you are going to run a RAID array, in which
case you will want to go with dynamic volume.

And it will probably be simpler to connect one drive at a time.





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Tumbleweed36

If not using Raid, then you need to turn that option off in the Bios setup menu. Second, when you start to install windows on the Sata, do you have the Sata drivers (from motherboard disk) on a floppy ready to install at the F6 prompt? I would suggest also, that you (in the bios setup menu) go to the hard drive priority area and (boot section) and make sure the Sata is listed first that you want the OS to be put on. Then, the easiest way is to disconnect the IDE drive until you get the OS set up on this rig.

Rob 1

I see a lot of people installing the drivers at the F6 prompt, but I never bother, and all my SATA drives work correctly, off of a SP2 XP disc.

Xsoftware

Do sata drives require jumper settings?

Tumbleweed36

Only if your motherboard supports only Sata I and the new drive is Sata II. Then, you need to change the drive jumpers to have it respond to the Sata I motherboard.

Tumbleweed36

Normally, if you have XP, then you need the drivers on there if you use the disk for an OS. For the standard non-OS data disk, then you don't need them. If you have Vista, then you don't need them because they are contained in Vista.

Rob 1

I've never installed SATA drivers for the os drive. Again, i'm talking XP SP2 discs, which have SATA drivers built in.

AnthonyStargate

Thank you for your suggestions. Though unfortunately, all the suggestions require that the computer already see the sata hard drives, which is the problem.

I had 3 responses from Gigabyte, and all of them were of no use, as well as being very poorly written in Chinese English. And the driver that the Gigabyte tech support person suggested would not even install itself.

I was thinking - What part of the computer actually talks to the hard drives? Isn't it the chipset?

I did a little reading and discovered, yes indeed, the chipset is the part of the motherboard that talks to the hard drives. The chipset on this motherboard was made by Via. I went to Via's website and found the appropriate driver for my chipset. I installed the driver, shut off the computer and hooked up one of the sata hard drives.

Voila! The sata hard drive showed up in Windows Explorer! I could look at its files, save more files, all that useful hard drive stuff. I turned off the computer and hooked up the other sata hard drive. The computer recognized it as well.

So with a little focused thinking about - What actually is the problem here? - I was able to diagnose the situation and find the one and only chipset driver that would work. I felt very intelligent for about 10 minutes, bonus

This one is solved!

Tumbleweed36

Hey, glad you are up and running. That is truly good news.