Where I am.

[Flanker]

I have my new PC built up. I turned it on and went through the BIOS and CMOS and stuff. I have the Power Cable Connected to my SATA HDD but the computer still won't recognize it. I need help with that. Also, what do I do after this? What steps do I take? When should I start installing the OS? Sorry, this is my first time building a PC from scratch. I just want to learn all this now so that I don't have to go through all of it later.

 

[TheHeadFL]

Usually the SATA stuff is disabled by default on boards I've used. You would need to find anything in the BIOS setup screens regarding SATA.

For instance, for me, I had to go in there on my P4 system and tell it that SATA1 was Primary Master, and SATA2 was Primary Slave. Of course, if you do this, you can't also have a HDD plugged in on the IDE bus marked as Primary Master or Slave. If you just have the one SATA drive though, its no big deal.

 

[Law]

you need the driver for your SATA harddrive, when you're about to install 2000 or XP it will ask for you to press a key to install a third party raid driver. It should come in a floopy disk and make sure you select the right driver, it would usually indicate you to install one that is compatible with your chipset and OS. If you don't have one just go to the maufacture website, I'm sure they will provide you one to download.

Make sure to check your SATA connection, that it is in the primary connector, usually indicated by SATA0

 

[icemakr]

Yeah you definately need the driver, your board should come with a sata driver , maybe on a floppy. And the SATA settings in bios should already be enabled out of the box I don't know what kind of boards TheHeadFL has used but ABIT, GIGABYTE, and MSI that I know of make you turn all of that off if your not using it.

 

[Flanker]

Yes, there came a floppy disk with the drivers on it. My mobo is a Abit AV8 (as in my sig). Another person said that when I insert the OS installation CD into my drive, thats when I will be prompted to press "F6" and install SCSI drivers. The HDD isn't a SCSI drive, but I don't know if that makes any difference.

My other question is, how can I start installing a OS when I don't have a recognized HDD to install it on?

 

[Blackmoore]

By the way, it may not recognize those Abit Drivers. A few months ago when I installed my SATA Drive on my Abit KV8 Pro, I tried popping the disk in that came with the mobo, and it still didn't recognize the disk as raid drivers. If you don't get it to work, go to Abit's site and download the newest version of the drivers, and put them on a disk to boot off.

 

[Law]

It's not gonna get recognized until you install that driver. So pop in your CD and press F6. Make sure you select the driver that reference your chipset and OS. Afterward install the OS, if you get to the point when it ask to select which partition to format or delete etc than thats a good sign.

 

[Mionics]

bro SATA is a type of SCSI drive. do what the other guys told you to and you should be fine. id make my own sata disk if i was you. they should have a utility on the cd that came with your mobo.

 

[Flanker]

These are what I got from the CD that came with my Mobo. It has drivers on it, among other things. I also got a floppy disk with the mobo with SATA drivers on it. This is a pic on the inside of the SATA drivers folder on the CD.



But that folder is 6MB+, thus too big to put on a floppy, thus I went into another folder, which I suspect is the correct one.



Confirmation please?

 

[Law]

you gotta use the sata driver that came in the floopy. I think those file on your CD are backup driver and other driver for your motherboard.