emergency hdd installation help needed!!!!

[mastertangster]

ok i recently puchased an AMD athlon 64 300+ and an ASUS A8V deluxe motherboard for my computer

since then, windows will not recognize my 300gb sata hard drive in the installation forcing me to install windows to a slow, noisy, worn out drive. I have tried installing the proper drivers during the whole "press f6 to install..." thing and I have swited back and fourth the RAID mode and IDE mode in the BIOS without luck. Strange thing is, the hdd works fine in windows. I really need help because this drive is going to fail on me, and i am so frusterated with the slowness that i am on the verge of smashing the thing. Can any of you help?

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Have you set up an active partition on the new drive yet. Use a windows 98 boot disk and boot up your system and at the a: type fdisk and set a active partition. That is if you havnt dont this.

 

[mastertangster]

i just reset the partition in windows as active do you think that will help? also, i CAN NOT format the drive because 1.5 years of backup files including songs and photoshop work is on it. will doing this active partition thing in fdisk format the drive ort just change the settings?