New Board / One-Only SATA Drive Issue

[natasha]

I recently purchased components for new computer and yes, this is the first time I have attempted to build a new computer from scratch. I bought a a7n8x deluxe motherboard with amd 3200 cpu with a msi fx5900 graphics card and also dvd-rom. The hard drive I bought was a SATA WD 36 GB raptor at 10 k rpms. The problem I am having is the board doesn't acknowledge one sata drive's existence but seems to want 2. The bios just looks for Eide Hard drives and doesn't see the sata till I try to enter a RAID configuration. Does this mean I have to get another WD raptor SATA hard drive to get it to run? Run meaning like get Windows XP on it (I have the full installation disc) and finishing the set-up. I read a previous thread about a barricuda and wd raptor but it appear this person already had an operating system on it and the board doesn't even come up with a f6 command to install a new OS. Also, is it absolutely necessary to have a floppy drive? Is the floppy drive only saving grace is to update bios of a board? I didnt' get one; I think I will since they're so cheap. Or can I burn a disc from other computer and transfer it to the new dvd-rom/computer and will it update the bios in that way also? I set the bios up to read from dvd-rom first and no floppy. Sorry, I appreicate any replies. I know this will take patience to read and answer. I'll appreciate your time spent in doing so.

[Braxas]

I can't help much when it comes to the SATA Situation since I don't know much about these new, much faster hard drives. However, I'd suggest checking in the BIOS again to make sure there isn't a switch to enable the SATA bus if it's disabled by default (may be since SATA is fairly new and I'm sure a lot of people don't have them yet).

As far as not having a floppy-drive. These days it isn't really necessary although I still prefer to have one in since they are under $10 - why not? $10 to save a headache once and while is well worth the money in my opinion. I'd recommend getting a CD-RW in that computer if you don't have one already, they are so cheap now that it's worth it as well. The great thing is if you have your computer set to boot from cd-rom, you can make a bootable cd-rom through Nero and use that as a startup disk if you wish. Like I say, even though floppy drives are quickly becoming non-existant and not needed I still prefer to have one in the computer just to save a headache once and a great while when you might just need that capability.

[ils_fl]

make sure you have the latest bios version.

[Rich A]

I came across this with an ABIT board regarding on-board SATA contollers. Don't know if the ASUS BIOS is the same but you might check this out.

In the BIOS there is a section where there are TWO options. One to enable the on-board SATA controller. And a second to enable that device's RAID capability.

I have found that when using one SATA drive on that controller, EVEN though you are NOT using an actual RAID configuration, that you must have both options enabled. In my case the drive would NOT be recognized as a boot device until I enabled the RAID option.

This could be something within the actual implementation of the on board RAID controller where if you are hooking up SATA drives, only to be "non-bootable" extra drives, you do NOT need to enable the RAID option. BUT if you want one installed SATA drive to be a boot device, it must have the RAID option enabled.

Sounds kinda screwy to me .. by definition a RAID has to have at least two drives. Probably just an over-sight when the RAID controller people developed the firmware.

Right now I'm running a WD 7200 rpm 120 GB SATA drive as a single boot drive. I also have 4 of the 10K Raptors on another PCI based controller running a Raid 0 set in that same PC. Other than the lousy performance of the 4-drive RAID .. (another subject) it all works just fine.

By the way .. I also tested that system using a couple of the Raptors in a stripped 0 array as the boot drive. Windows never ran so fast. It was like I grew a 2nd processor. I needed those two Raptors to add to the other two in the big raid system. So reverted back to a single non-raid boot. But for a while it was nice having WinXP boot in a few seconds. <grin>

Hope this helps ..