Hey guys, ran into a bit of a problem trying to install a new SATA HDD.

My system is of the old Socket A variety, based around an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2.0 motherboard. Said mother board has support for 2 SATA drives in theory. At present it is running happily, booting windows from an old 60GB IDE drive, with an additional 200GB SATA. It has been running in the configuration for years without incident. Unfortunately my storage needs have increased, so I decided to add a 750GB SATA into the mix. It seems to recognise the disk just after POSTing and I get this type of screen:

Sil 3112A SATARaid BIOS Version 4.2.47
Copyright (C) 1997-2004 Silicon Image, Inc.

Press <Ctrl+S> or F4 to enter RAID utility
0 WDCblahblahblah old hard drive appropriatenumberofMB
1 WDCblahblahblah new hard drive (nothing)

With the new disk hooked up, my computer wont get past this point, and no amount of pushing F4 or ctrl+s will convince it otherwise. I should also point out the pushing F4 or ctrl+s does nothing even with the new disk removed, and my current working system set up.

Any ideas as to the problem?

The new drive would be set for sata2. There should be a jumper on the back to turn it to sata 1

I was hoping it would be something as simple as that, but the jumper settings don't really make much sense to me. Here is the diagram from the website:



Which mode should it be on?

The drive doesn't actually come with a jumper, but I did put a spare one on pins 7&8, which made no difference to anything.

*Edit* Disregard. I am a retard. I know what to do now. Cheers Saspro!

Ok, I was optimistic there for a second, but it still didn't work. I put the jumper on pins 5&6. I'm assuming they were the correct ones.

I also tried booting without my 200GB SATA, and with the new drive plugged in with the same cable I was using for the old one. Still no luck. My computer may just be too old and stubborn to accept this particular change.

have a look in the BIOS and check the boot order

you may find that you will have to set the sata drive to boot for the OS there
in an old BIOS it may mean booting from SCSI instead of IDE

you may also via the BIOS have to disable the RAID settings for a single SATA HDD …

Cheers.

I've had a look in the BIOS, and couldn't see any relevant settings, but I'll look again. The problem seems to be that I can't access the RAID settings for some reason. Even with my system in its original configuration, and working properly.

Nothing.

Looks like I'm going to have to wait until I can afford to build a new system to get that new drive up and running.

Got a spare PCI slot?

I have an XFX 3 port SATA controller if you want to pay the postage for it

edit: Apparently it's SATA not SATA2... not sure though

If I remember rightly some boards with the Nforce3 chipset couldn't see disks larger than 250GB.

Your mobo, being NForce2, might suffer the same.

Yeah, that's the conclusion I've come to. Cheers for the help though.

@Fin, I think I'll take you up on that offer. Its certainly worth a try. I'll PM you later.

Such a shame. I know this doesn't help, but I thought I had the same controller on my nForce4 board and that's currently running well over 3TBs of reasonably recent Samsungs.

Have you tried updating the BIOS to the latest version?

Yeah, its up to date.

Have you tried booting with just the 60 gig and the new sata .windoze might want to see it first .just a thought .

I had actually tried that, and it didn't work.

However, I just tried something different. I connected the drive with the computer already turned on and running windows. It is showing in device manager, and claims to be functioning properly, but I can't see it in my computer so I'm unable to format and use it.

Still, its progress I think.