SATA drives

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jamesennis

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May 3, 2008
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My brother has reformatted his PC and put windows XP back on. The drive that windows is on is IDE (C drive). Since reformatting the PC his second hard drive which is a SATA drive is not being recognised. It is not being recognised in the BIOS either. All the cables are correct.

What do I need to do to get windows to recognise the SATA drive? The SATA drive contains important information that cannot be lost so the fix cannot including reformatting the drive.

Motherboard = Chaintech 7NJS

SATA drive = Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 model ST380013A8

The PC does not have a floppy drive. Has a CD player and DVD re-writer.
 
Thanks for the reply. There are few things in drvice manager with a ? They are motherboard stuff like sound (I have downloaded motherboard drivers). If i remember right the SATA drive is just not being recognised at all by device manager. Mind you there is something about RAID with a ?

Do you think the lack of motherboard drivers could be the issues in the drive not being recognised?
 
That's not good if it isn't even shown in the BIOS, is there an option for IDE / AHCP ?

Also, do you have other SATA ports to try on the motherboard, & possibly other SATA cables?
I once had a drive I was about to RMA b/c of high error rates & noises -- but after moving it to another SATA port on the MoBo it's worked perfect since :p

PS does XP have > SP2 ?
 
First thing I'd be doing is to get that drive out of the case. I never reformat or reinstall with another drive in the case that contains irreplaceable data. You just never know what Windows is gonna do.

I'd try that drive in another SATA capable machine or USB enclosure to make sure the data is still intact.

After installing all the correct drivers and eliminating all "?" marks in the device manager, start trouble shooting again.

Good Luck!
 
If I understand correctly, the SATA drive was connected and working on the same setup before the reformat? If so, my guess is that you need to reinstall the SATA drivers since they would have been wiped out during the reformat.

This sounds similar to this issue (although with a different mobo) found on TechRepublic:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=56&threadID=179151&messageID=1824615

Here is the fix suggested:

"You can get around this by doing a repair install of Windows and installing the SATA drivers {there is a floppy disk that came with the M'Board that has the drivers on it and they are also on the CD that comes with the M'Board, but the Floppy is the easier to install from!} At the screen where you get the message to press the F6 key to install additional drivers. Or to do it properly reinstall Windows from scratch and do it properly."

Hope this helps!!
 
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