Installing a SATA hard drive.

[cydonia]

So this is my first time setting up SATA harddrive, and I understand you need to download drivers for your mobo and boot it from a floppy disk. Well I do not have a floppy disk driver on my other computer to transfer the data on there so is there a way I can boot the driver off of a usb data storage?

 

[mechBgon]

Hi cydonia, what motherboard brand/model are you using?

 

[cydonia]

it's a ASUS A8V DELUXE

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: cydonia
it's a ASUS A8V DELUXE

Eeeek, that motherboard almost singlehandedly inspired this pic. Can you just exchange the SATA drive for a PATA drive? I have a whole page of SATA advice, but that board's SATA controller is intended to be RAID only.

 

[cydonia]

...but there is a non raid sata slot.. Is there no way make it work?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: cydonia
...but there is a non raid sata slot.. Is there no way make it work?

Ooops, error... fixing. The gist of it is, get a different, non-VIA-based motherboard that fits your CPU and GPU needs.

Separate note: make sure to install stuff in the right order and not to expose your freshly-installed WinXP to worm attack: how to do that stuff and scroll down to the first big pic there.

 

[Trashman]

"No drivers needed on floppy, just plug the drive into the correct SATA jacks and commence installing WinXP" as usual

Just wanna add a tip, mechBgon did mention in one of his links to change BIOS setting to "normal" or "ide" anything but raid....so make sure you check.

SATA controllers usually have two modes of operation: "normal" or RAID. You chose between these two modes in the motherboard's BIOS menu

there ya go.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Trashman
"No drivers needed on floppy, just plug the drive into the correct SATA jacks and commence installing WinXP" as usual

Just wanna add a tip, mechBgon did mention in one of his links to change BIOS setting to "normal" or "ide" anything but raid....so make sure you check.

SATA controllers usually have two modes of operation: "normal" or RAID. You chose between these two modes in the motherboard's BIOS menu

there ya go.

Aye, and if I remember correctly, the problem with the A8V Deluxe is that both the onboard Promise PCI-based controller and the VIA southbridge's native controller are RAID-only, so there's no IDE-type mode available I was going to suggest a K8N-E Deluxe, since it's got an AGP slot and doesn't need drivers to install WinXP, but then D'OH I realized that won't work because it's Socket 754

 

[cydonia]

Ok sorry for being a such a newb... I went into my BIOS setting and saw that SATA boot rom was disabled so i went ahead and enabled it. Then like you said I changed the mode to IDE instead of raid. After saving and restarting I got this exact message

VIA Technologies, inc.VIA VT8237 Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utility V2.01

Scan devices, Please wait...
Press <Tab> key into User window!

Hardware initiate failed, Please check device!!!!
The Bios does not be installed. Press <g> to continue!

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: cydonia
Ok sorry for being a such a newb... I went into my BIOS setting and saw that SATA boot rom was disabled so i went ahead and enabled it. Then like you said I changed the mode to IDE instead of raid. After saving and restarting I got this exact message

VIA Technologies, inc.VIA VT8237 Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utility V2.01

Scan devices, Please wait...
Press <Tab> key into User window!

Hardware initiate failed, Please check device!!!!
The Bios does not be installed. Press <g> to continue!

That means it doesn't detect any SATA drives attached to the two plugs that belong to it. They'd be the upper pair that are closer to the southbridge.

 

[cydonia]

Ok I moved the sata slot to the raid slots and enabled IDE on it. Now it seems to read the hard drive but fails to read the xp disc and I get "Reboot and Select proper Boot device" message. I have cd rom on boot priority.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: cydonia
Ok I moved the sata slot to the raid slots and enabled IDE on it. Now it seems to read the hard drive but fails to read the xp disc and I get "Reboot and Select proper Boot device" message. I have cd rom on boot priority.

Make sure your optical drives are connected to the IDE plugs that are up next to the main ATX power cable, not the one that's down low by itself (the one that's down low is connected to the Promise SATA controller, and can't handle optical drives).

 

[cydonia]

so do you think this is a cd- rom problem? Searching it on google everyone seems to think this error message is hard drive related.
btw thanks for taking your time to help me out. Really appericiate it

 

[cydonia]

Also it seems that My optical drive is currently connected at secondary slave slot should I try to move that to a different ide slot?

 

[camara120]

cydonia,

the answer to your initial question is "no"... you cant get drivers from a USB device while installing windows. it must be from a floppy disk OR you can burn your own custom XP disc with your drivers integrated.

it sounds like you have other more important issues right now though. it sounds like you cant boot from CDROM. I would give that priority right now... otherwise you will never install XP.

Do you happen to know what BIOS version youre running? The latest final released BIOS is 1017. There is also a beta of 1018.001 available but you probably dont want that.

There is a manual available for your motherboard if you dont have it.

If I were you, I would disconnect all SATA cables from your motherboard. Hook a single IDE cable from the motherboard (PRI_IDE closest to memory slot) directly to the CDROM drive. MAKE SURE the jumper on the CDROM is set to master. Then turn the computer back on and see if you can boot from CD.

 

[cydonia]

ok a quick update (didnt get any sleep tonight) I tried putting in windows 98 cd since xp did not work... and it read it. So I spent the whole night first installing the windows 98 and then upgrading to xp. But just when I thought nothing could go wrong, at the final step of xp installation I get the blue screen of death ( the computer reboot to finish installation and I got the error) I am guessing that the problem is from the sata driver not being installed. If someone could tell me what I should do from here it would be great.

to camara, the bios is 1018.

 

[camara120]

If youre feeling brave, you could start reading how to make an Unattended XP Boot Disc.

There is a section there for beginning users. It will show you how to slipstream SP2 to your disc if thats not already done and it will ALSO show you how to integrate drivers required by your PC to boot.

However, you might find it easier to just use nLite which can do everything for you.

Good luck!