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Non-RAID SATA Question

D

Darkeone

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 8, 2000
Messages
1,823
Ok, I came into a deal for an SATA WD 120GB HDD. I have the following setup

A7N8X E- Deluxe Rev?
2500+ Barton
Thermaltake Silent Boost cooler
1 x 512MB Crucial PC3200
WD 80GB HDD
Radeon AIW 9800 Pro


My issue is that I want to use the SATA drive as a boot drive but there is nothing in the manual about using a single SATA drive. It only talks about RAID. I have been told by people that this board will support a single SATA drive. I have yet to figure it out. Here is what I've tried so far

I physically removed the 80GB IDE drive then I made sure that the onboard SATA jumper was set correctly. I plugged in the drive and rebooted.I can get the motherboard to recognize the drive, but then it just hangs when it gets past the "press ctrl s to see RAID functions.blah, blah blah. I can't get the PC to boot from floppy or CD so I can't install any third party drivers if I wanted.


HELP!!!!!!!!!

I'd be happy buying a controller card if I have to, but I'd rather not.
If I have to use this as a secondary drive to my IDE drive, I'll be happy to do that as well. I just want to be able to use this drive as I also use my PC as a Tivo.

Again, HELLLLLPPPPP.

Thanks!
 
BIOS vary considerably
but look for a Bus Master or Manager option
 
If you want to use your new SATA HDD as a boot drive, you'll need to pop in the windows installation CD so you can install the OS, right? During the installation, hit F6 to install the SATA driver from floppy (or CD). But you say you can't boot from CD right now? How come?
 
That's a good question. In another thread, it was mentioned that I should change it to scsi rather than IDE boot device and see where that takes me. I'll also have to look for the Bus Manager option also. Once I figure it out, belive me I will post it so others can get this straight.
 
a little research suggests for the A7N8X there is a jumper on the mobo to enable the SATA controller
 
Yes, you're right. By default it is set to enabled though. Unless you (Darkeone) changed the jumper settings, your SATA controller should be on.
 
Ok. I got it to work.

1. I had to change the boot device to scsi in the bios.
2. I had to press f6 for third party scsi device when Windows first starts from the CD
3. I inserted the sata controller driver which I downloaded from the asus site and copied to floppy.
4.Windows went on it's merry way installing.
5. I followed the prompts and voila, it installed. I have a ton of drivers to install now.

Thanks for everyone's help.

The jumper was never changed so that wasn't it. I just didn't set the boot device to scsi. Once I did that, it let me boot from the CD. Also I missed the first scsi third party driver prompt so windows did not recognize my drive. I kept rebooting until I caught the prompt. It looks like it skips after you press f6 but give it time and it comes around. Now, I just need to add my IDE device as a second drive. Woohoo.
 
and that might be where a Bus Manager option might come in
as to which controller is the default "boot" controller

hopefully simply setting it to SCSI addresses that
if you have a problem then look for an option like that in the BIOS

Glad you got it working ;)
 
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