Installing windows, SATA prob

[miggs78]

Ok guys, I finally got my Biostar i45 board installed. Trying to install windows on a SATA drive. I loaded the included driver CD in my current PC and copied the ICH10 SATA drivers on to the floppy.

Now here is the real problem, the SATA drive does get detected in the BIOS, when I run the setup and load the SATA drivers from the floppy, when it goes to selecting what drive to choose from or create a partition, they are no disks detected, it says "Setup cannot access this disk". I have 3 hard drives, and I tried them all, but it doesn't seem to work on any of them. Is there something wrong I am doing..

Please help me.

[JD]

Did you go into the BIOS and try changing the SATA mode to say AHCI?

[miggs78]

Originally Posted by jdrom17

Did you go into the BIOS and try changing the SATA mode to say AHCI?

Yeah I set it as that in the BIOS. I downloaded the WD Diagnostic Tool for DOS booted with that it didn't detect any HDDs, than I used the WD Lifeguard Tools, booted with floppy, this time it detected the HDD, created a partition, booted back, detects in BIOS, but not in windows again.

Tell me something as I doing something wrong, I load the ICH10 AHCI controller (for additional drivers) and it goes on, and then usually right before the agreeing the agreement, if you notice at the bottom, it usually tries to read the drive, when you press F8 to agree, it should give you a hard drive there, in my case I get none. I do have a feeling that its a bad hard drive. Do you know any tool that works with all hdd's, that I can use to test for errors.

Thanks.

[sswilson]

Did you try all of the different SATA channels? Maybe it's something to do with the standard Chipset controller vice the manufacturer's ad-on for extra slots? (Just a shot in the dark....)

[miggs78]

Originally Posted by sswilson

Did you try all of the different SATA channels? Maybe it's something to do with the standard Chipset controller vice the manufacturer's ad-on for extra slots? (Just a shot in the dark....)

It looks like I have got it. Before I had 3 drives, 2 WD's which I RAIDED, but for some reason 1 of them failed, and doesn't get detected anymore, which made it odd. And I have a seagate and this wd none of them were working for me, so I was trying this with the one WD I had left, because I had first RAIDED them the drivers were detecting it as 1 drive, and since the other wasn't present it wouldn't display anything (even though it was in AHCI mode and not RAID), so I booted again in RAID mode in BIOS, deleted the RAID which was already failed due to 1 drive missing. And bingo it picked up a hard drive, now I have to pray out of 4 hard drives, 3 went, I have all my hopes on this last one standing.

Thanks for trying to help this hard headed guy, I could figure it out by myself, but I never think you know.

[DarKStar]

I know this sounds stupid, but is SATA enabled in your BIOS ? Boards that have both IDE and SATA have options to enable or disable either or both - make sure your SATA is enabled. Also, if you wish to run SATA in IDE emulation mode, you won't need to load any drivers during windows setup - it will be recognized just like a regular PATA drive - only AHCI mode requires the drivers. If after trying everything and checking for proper power and data cable and your drive is still not recognized by the BIOS or a diagnostic util, and despite running the most current BIOS, then try to plug your SATA data cable on another SATA connector on the board, to rule out a defective connector.

[miggs78]

I got it to install windows finally, but seems the HDD could be really faulty. Once it tries to boot into windows, it will show a BSOD and reboot, now unfortunately I'm unable to see the BSOD, since it windows you know that option to turn of restart on system crash is on, I tried all possible ways to boot to windows, safe mode, last known good configuration, none seem to work.

So apart from chkdsk, is there any 3rd part tool that can enable me to test my HDD if it is really bad or not.

Thanks

[Nodscene]

Hiren's Boot Cd is a great diagnostics disc. I think it's only about 80megs in size and you should be able to find it on any torrent site. It will have HDD diagnostics as well as memtest etc. It's a bootable cd so that makes life easier.

[cdn_Madrach]

Spinrite is an awesome tool. Does diagnostics and even repairs hd's. I don't know the solution for your drive problem but there are issues with trying to use a drive from a previous raid array. I haven't experienced it but a friend recently tried to format his previous raid array back to a single os drive and storage drive and had a lot of difficulty getting the drives recognized. I will ask him later today how he solved the issue.

[miggs78]

Thanks, I'll try one of the both or both the software suggestions. Hey Madrach, I've never experienced such a problem of using a hard drive from a previous RAID array. All I can think of is that the hard drive is faulty, because it was sitting on carpet for 3 months or even more than that.

I was planning to buy newer hard drives, but I wish I can find at least one of my currently possessed ones to at least work for a few days.