SATA Installation Help

[WeezelDS]

I've never dealt w/ SATA drives before, so bare w/ me...I'm really stuck :(

Specs:
WinXp SP2
Abit KV8 (latest BIOS, v26) mobo
Sempron 3400+
1 gb ocz memory
2 IDE WD drives
1 IDE DVD/CD drive

I'm attempting to install a SATA WD 3200KS drive...however, i have no clue about how to get it up and running...I installed the SATA RAID driver from a cd that came w/ the mobo, but i still have a yellow exclaimation point in my device manager that says 'VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller', which is obviously not working properly. The new sata drive doesnt show up in windows' harddrive management utility. I can't find anything in the bios about SATA. When booting, after the post, if i hit tab, i get some kinda blue screen config, where it doesn't detect the sata drive. Some ppl have mentioned hitting F6 during boot, which doesn't do anything, but i can't tell if it is asking me to hit F6, cuz the boot messages run by too fast. I have the sata drive plugged into the sata1 port on the mobo. I have a regular power connector going to the hdd, and *not* a special sata power cable. Some ppl have said that I absolutely need to use the SATA driver thats on a floppy that came w/ the mobo...but this sounds ridiculous first of all, and secondly, i have 3 floppies, but none of them work, cuz that technology is nearly 20 yrs old, and nobody uses it anymore, there must be another way right? Also, the abit tech support guy said that isn't necessary. Lemme know if you need anymore info, as western digital and abit's tech support keep saying for me to call the other one, and neither of them seem to have any answers :(

thanks

[Flintstone]

In device manager, right click on the device, properties, Driver tab, update driver and point it to the optical drive where you've put the disk with the drivers on it.

That said, you should be able to verify someplace in the bios that the sata controller is enabled, somewhere like "integrated devices" or the like. I'll presume it is enabled or it wouldn't show up in device manager as improperly installed.

The only time you'd be prompted to hit F6 is during the XP install, at the bottom of the screen, and then the install would stop and prompt you for controller drivers that aren't already embedded in XP itself. Once you've got the OS up and running, you'll never see the F6 prompt. That said, although you're correct that floppy drive technology is old, at the above mentioned F6 prompt, XP will ONLY take drivers loaded through a floppy drive. If you were trying to load XP onto an SATA drive in your system as the only drive, you'd need a working floppy or the expertise to slipstream the drivers into an XP install disk of your own making.

Good Luck,

Flint

[WeezelDS]

thanks for the reply :)

unfortunately, i tried installing the drivers the cd using their installer, and i still have the exclamation point in the device manager...i tried downloading the drivers from abit's site and using that installer, with the same results...so i tried updating the driver via the device manager and hoping to point it to the drivers manually, trying the mobo cd, and the downloaded drivers...still stuck...there were a couple places on the cd and the download each where the right driver might be (and really looks like its right), each of which i tried, and it seemed to install correctly, but after rebooting the stupid exclamation is still there....so i tried first uninstalling the drivers from the device manager and retrying all of the above....same thing every time....abit's tech support is less than helpful, they just say, 'you need to deal w/ windows, not our problem'...btw, those via installers installed a 'VIA RAID tool' in my system tray...it doesnt do anything besides say 'No stand-alone disk and No usable disk array attached, please check if any disk array is broken.'

btw, i found the stuff in the bios about the sata drive, it was already enabled, so i don't think that is the problem.

I just can't seem to get the driver for the 'VIA Serial ATA RAID Controller' to install correctly...any more ideas?

thanks