[aolforbroadband]

My friend and I just built his new computer this past week, and even though both drives are recognized by the BIOS and everything else, it's still not a drive listed in Windows. So right now he's running on just his one 37GB WD Raptor HD while his other SATA 250GB dedicated "pr0n" drive lays idle.

So my question is...how do we get them both up and running and ready for Windows XP Pro installation? Do we have to set up RAID, and if so, what are the steps and what numer RAID(sorry, I'm a bit of a RAID n00b)? If there's anyone who knows a place where to read how to set up 2 SATA drives, it would really help.

Thanks! :guitar:

 

[hushypushy]

well you cant RAID those two drives, they are quite different...you can RAID 2 raptors or something like that.

go to Administrative Tools--->Computer Management and go to Disk Management

 

[Esturk]

Is the 37Gig SATA as well?

 

[aolforbroadband]

They're both SATA.

 

[hushypushy]

Is the 37Gig SATA as well?

*cough* Raptors only come in SATA

 

[dpence]

the drive has to be partitioned first before it will show in windows/my computer
Did the drive come with a setup CD? If so simply set the bios to boot to cd first. The drive installation software will format and partition the drive however you want it.

 

[Vanit]

Dare I suggest your friend soiled his drive .

 

[Esturk]

Nah. Sounds like it just isn't partitioned. Like hushypushy said, it can be done from the Disk Manager in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management.

 

[Kraelis]

Actually... you need to install SATA drivers for Windows XP to recognize them. Though I personally use Home, I'm pretty sure that's also the case here. It appears that XP tries to recognize drives a bit differently. Windows 98 could see them, but XP simply turned a blind eye.

Note that this happened when I was installing a fresh XP on my SATA drive. So I COULD be wrong and that SATA drives are enabled already upon full install. But it's worth a try. Usually, SATA drives come with a CD or a disk that contains the needed drivers.

Here's the funny part in my problem. The CD couldn't be read in DOS mode so I had to get someone else to transfer the drivers to a diskette. Silly Seagate.... :lol:

 

[hushypushy]

hm, that;s strange Kraelis. i just build a PC for my friend--he bought XP Home SP2 and a WD 120gb SATA drive. we installed XP on the sata drive no problems and it ran smooth out of the box.

 

[Kraelis]

hm, that;s strange Kraelis. i just build a PC for my friend--he bought XP Home SP2 and a WD 120gb SATA drive. we installed XP on the sata drive no problems and it ran smooth out of the box.

That IS strange. Since SATA is neither IDE nor SCSI, and I was under the impression the Windows XP sees only those. I think my Seagate Barracuda is recognized as a SCSI by the installation program of Windows. It took me an hour of scratching my head to figure out that the "Press <button> to install SCSI drivers" actually referred to SATA drivers as well in my case.

Yes, It was XP SP2.... :???:

 

[hushypushy]

that is really weird. for me, i just booted it up, and when it got to the screen where it shows HDDs, it showed it perfectly fine.

HOWEVER there was a problem. it, for some reason, put the SATA drive AFTER....so only later did we realize that his bootup drive is F:/ and it called his secondary media drive (partitioned into two) C and D. weird.

 

[Kraelis]

That's because for some strange reason, SATA drives are given less priority. I used encounter this when I use a removable drive bay. Whenever I shoved the drive in, I always ended up booting into Windows 98 (which resides in my IDE drive). I had to manually fix the BIOS settings for it to go back to recognizing the SATA as the primary. I think Windows might do this too, but I'm not sure.

 

[hushypushy]

well, when i get my A64 and SATA setup (should be next month...*crosses fingers*) all my HDDs are OUT except for the SATA one....that ensures it will be C

 

[Esturk]

Yeah, I even sold my old IDE Maxtor so I could buy an SATA. Might as well do it as soon as you can.