Heeeeelp!

[Kogarashi]

This drive was the better deal on NewEgg, and my motherboard specs said they supported SATA, so I didn't realize there would be this much of an issue. ::sigh::

My board was purchased in 2004, and I've seen dates as early as 2003 for when these things were made. It doesn't recognize SATA II, which is why I needed to jumper the drive.

Eh, if all else fails, I may just end up getting a newer motherboard (and a newer power supply). I've been itching to get them anyway, since some of the on-board stuff on my current one is twitchy.

[Eric the Grey]

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you get another IDE drive? From what I've read, you're adding a level of complexity to your whole system by trying to force XP onto a drive it isn't natively capable of using.

As far as motherboards goes, I would think that if yours supports the SATA drive, it can't be all that old.

As far as combining SATA and IDE drives, I have no problems on my current box. I have 2 SATA's and 2 IDE hard drives, plus my DVD RW and not one issue.



Eric the Grey

[Kogarashi]

::flop::

Well, I did get it to go past the license agreement a couple of times. But after that first fluke, it's been locking up on "Enabling in viasraid" or some junk. It'll eventually get past that to where I can choose which partition to install on, if any, but then locks up again and restarts for one reason or another.

I wonder what decent motherboards I can get without having to spend oodles of money....

Thanks for the input, vman. I'm working with just the SATA right now, and will worry about the IDE drives when the time comes. The only "serial" drive is the SATA itself; the other two drives are parallel ATA, if memory serves. Use the plain ol' ribbon cables and IDE ports on the mobo.

[vman]

I'll give you a warning, as someone who just went from IDE to SATA, if XP refuses to recognize your SATA harddrive during format, your only option is to go to Vista. XP apparently doesn't have native SATA support, and I couldn't find drivers to load while formatting the HD.

Really?
Wow. I didn't know that. It strikes me as odd, because SATA drives were out before Vista, but who knows.

EDIT -- Nevermind about the rest of it...that'll teach me to not read the entire thread before commenting.

EDIT2 -- Actually...
You probably already know this, but if you're mixing serial drives and sata drives, the serial drive NEEDS to be using a particular part of the ribbon, or it'll cause problems.
I can't remember how it needs to be setup, but it is specific...

[Kogarashi]

Well, that's one step the ASUS forums were helpful with. I've got the latest driver pack for my motherboard, and it has a little program on it for turning a floppy into a driver floppy for just this purpose.

And it finally worked. Mostly. The computer appeared to misplace the drive briefly, so I turned everything off and reseated the cables, then booted back up. Lucky me, there's the drive again, and this time Windows Setup recognized it because it took me to the License Agreement rather than complaining of no drive. I got part of the drive partitioned and started setting things up, and went to do something else I needed to do. Came back just in time to see the computer restarting (part of Setup, I guess?), only now it's asking to set up Windows again and asking for drivers again and not seeing the drive again. ::sigh::

If this continues, I'm contacting WD to see if they have tips.

[technical.angel]

Now if I can get Windows Setup to see it too....

Welcome to where I crashed and burned. No matter what I did, I could NOT get Windows setup to recognize my HD. If you can find the SATA drivers Windows wants, then it'll work. If not, Vista.

Good luck.

[Kogarashi]

Oh, loads. /sarcasm

This is what I get for having an older motherboard. ::sigh::

[LostMyMind]

Fun stuff, eh?

[Kogarashi]

Well, this is going to take longer than I thought. ::annoyed::

After spending several hours trying to figure out how to get the BIOS to notice the drive (Google, you are so unhelpful today), I'm still not sure I've succeeded. The manual for this mobo is very non-descriptive about what the various BIOS options mean, nor does it actually give much in the way of instructions on installing a SATA drive. Some days I think they get the same people who put subtitles on Hong Kong bootlegged movies to translate their manual. ::grumble::

After poking around Asus's and Western Digital's sites for a while, I finally figured I needed to put a jumper on the drive to "downgrade" it for my mobo. Yay for having spare jumpers lying around.

I still can't find the drive in the BIOS, but I do have the only Serial ATA option I can find enabled. During POST, the computer detects the IDE drives (currently the two DVD drives, as I've disconnected the two HDDs), and then on the next screen for a split second I can see it spotting the SATA drive on Serial Channel 1. However, BIOS doesn't show me anything special (I don't even know where to look).

Tried installing Windows, but it complained that it couldn't find any HDD on the system. ::facepalm::

Looks like it's time to try contacting ASUS and WD. ::sigh:: Who will likely take a long time responding, if people's comments on the ASUS forum are to be believed.

ETA: Ok, after further digging through the ASUS forums, it looks like the BIOS won't actually show me the drive, but I got into the RAID utility this time and it shows it, and after flashing the BIOS it looks like it is actually detecting the drive. Yay. Now if I can get Windows Setup to see it too....

[Kogarashi]

Hmm...maybe it could be the power supply. Hadn't thought of that. Either way, though, can't get in with the old drive anymore.

Only new device I added around the time of the first "misplacement" was the USB drive itself.

Once again, thanks everyone for your help! You're all awesome.

[LostMyMind]

Other than the "clicking" noise. That sounds alot more like controller failure than an actual drive failure. Since you're losing the drive mid transfer, etc....

Did you add new devices, it may just be possible that the power supply is barely supplying enough power to cover all the devices.

Let us know how your drive install goes. Once you have the new drive install and new OS installed. You should be able to re-connect the IDE hard-drives one at a time to transfer your old data.

[Kogarashi]

Thanks for your input, Eric.

I'm fairly convinced now that the OS drive, at least, was failing, if not both, since I had just the OS drive hooked up yesterday and today, and it was still running slow and clicking. And earlier today it finally just quit on me while I was in the process of copying some last-minute files (favorites and Outlook Express e-mails) I'd forgotten to back up earlier. (I'm posting this from my husband's laptop; thank goodness for remembering my password.)

I ran the WD diagnostic on both drives, since the Maxtor drive was detected. I'm stumped with that, since the diagnostic utility claimed both drives were fine. Oh well.

I can't just swap drives and copy, unfortunately, since the new drive I have is SATA, while my two old drives are IDE. However, since the storage drive was left disconnected except for running the diagnostic on it early this morning, I'm fairly certain that one's still okay enough to copy from. Once I get the SATA drive up and running with the OS on it, I'll be doing the copying (probably in Safe Mode just to keep background applications to a minimum).

As far as the external drive goes, I couldn't get more than 1/10 of my storage drive copied to the USB drive before something happened to cancel the transfer and cause my storage drive to be "misplaced." Transfering in Safe Mode made it possible to transfer everything with no interruptions. I think there's something about the external hard drive that disagrees with the particular setup of my computer, for some reason. Doesn't matter much to me, since that drive is mostly for backup, and my husband uses it more than me.

Anyway, tomorrow morning is drive installation time (once I get Baby down for her nap). Wish me luck!

[Eric the Grey]

Thanks all!

I (should) have the drivers on my motherboard's installation CD. Yay for keeping all my CDs. I'll need to dig them up.

I was initially planning on installing and formatting the drive as a secondary drive, then disconnecting the old OS drive and putting XP on the SATA per Geek King's recommendation. Thanks for the tip, Pedersen. Yay also for still having a floppy drive and some floppies. Yay also for having cleared all the data off said floppies and formatting them, so they're now blank.

LostMyMind, thanks for the diganostic link. I'll have to hook up my storage drive again to run it on that (I disconnected it to mitigate some of the slow-downs and reduce the risk of damaging something important), and I'll see if it works on the Maxtor. If not, it's off to find a diagnostic for the Maxtor. So thanks again, I didn't even think of running a diagnostic.

After a call to a computer store half an hour away and then a drive there with Baby, I have myself a power adapter. ::knock on wood:: Hope this all works.

And I now know for future reference to never hook up that external drive to my computer without booting to Safe Mode first.

The only thing I can add to this, is that I disagree with Geek King about it being the OS drive. The problem sounds to me to be the data drive. When windows boots up, and cannot locate a drive that BIOS reports should be there, it usually takes considerably longer to do certain things, such as boot up, and scanning for drives when you open "My Computer."

Do the diagnostics and see what turns up from them, but my recommendation is, if you have a spare connection inside your computer, plug in the new drive, and copy your data files over to it ASAP. Then unplug the old data drive, to make the new drive take it's place (should become the original data drives drive letter, allowing all your applications to run from it). See how it goes from there. IF you still have a problem, you may still need to replace the system drive.

Oh, and why would you have to be in safe mode to hook up a USB drive? I've used several on my system and have one connected at all times for extra storage (mostly backups). The problems you related actually sounded like more drive problems to me. The USB drive should be able to function plugged in without any problems, unless IT had problems too...


Eric the Grey

[Aressel]

Maxtor was bought out by Seagate some time ago, so the diagnostic tool for Maxtor drives is Seatools, available from Seagate's website. Alternatively, you could try to find an old copy of Powermax (the old Maxtor tool) kicking around the net. Good luck.

[Kogarashi]

Thanks all!

I (should) have the drivers on my motherboard's installation CD. Yay for keeping all my CDs. I'll need to dig them up.

I was initially planning on installing and formatting the drive as a secondary drive, then disconnecting the old OS drive and putting XP on the SATA per Geek King's recommendation. Thanks for the tip, Pedersen. Yay also for still having a floppy drive and some floppies. Yay also for having cleared all the data off said floppies and formatting them, so they're now blank.

LostMyMind, thanks for the diganostic link. I'll have to hook up my storage drive again to run it on that (I disconnected it to mitigate some of the slow-downs and reduce the risk of damaging something important), and I'll see if it works on the Maxtor. If not, it's off to find a diagnostic for the Maxtor. So thanks again, I didn't even think of running a diagnostic.

After a call to a computer store half an hour away and then a drive there with Baby, I have myself a power adapter. ::knock on wood:: Hope this all works.

And I now know for future reference to never hook up that external drive to my computer without booting to Safe Mode first.