Ok Folks I Am Lost Witout A Cause Here!!!!

[KaraokeRulzz]

OK I have the P4P800 mobo and it has 2 SATA connections on it. I am running the XP Pro OS. ANy other inof needed just ask as I will be happy to answer.


I currentlly have an 80GB WD that houses my OS and personal files.
I have 2 WD 160GB that have music and an additional WD200 GB that also houses music and video.

I have 2 Maxtor SATA 120 GB drives. How do I install these.

Please help as I am at my wits end.

I have followed the directions that came with them BUT BUT BUT I have not found this driver that is being spoken of in refernce to making my computer SATA compatible.

I have checked every floppy and CD that came with all of these products and none of these have this driver. I have gone to the ASUS website and looked and still do not see one.

I had thought that the mobo was already configured for SATA drivesd since it had the connections.

All of this RAID stuff is foreign to me. I just dont see why I would want to stretch my files across to hard drives and chance losing both of them or even one and then only having half of my inofrmation.

I really need to know how to connect these new SATA drives as I am setting real close to empty on my other drives stoarge.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and when giving instructions PLEASE keep in mind that I am not the brightest BLONDE on the block....LOL:))



Tara

[Confused]

Open the mobo CD and look for a folder called drivers. Open that and there will be a folder there for SATA. You may not need the drivers as some boards have native SATA support.

Connect the drives, right click My Computer, select Manage, select Disk Management. There you can format and make the drives active. That might be all you need if your board has native support for SATA.
Chas

[LocoCoyote]

SATA is plug and play (or since we are talking Windows plug and pray). I am surprised you are having any issues at all. Did I understand this correct in that you are just adding, not replacing the drive?

[Xiun]

On the p4p800, the only SATA connections are actually RAID connections by default. To make them normal IDE, go into the BIOS, go to onboard devices, then enable the promise controller. Right under the promise controller, there should be something with the selections being either IDE or RAID. You want it to be on IDE. Well, it could be on RAID, but then you'de have to set each drive up as a single RAID drive, and thats a pain.

Hope that helps

[KaraokeRulzz]

I am either failing to tell you something or I am just totally stuck on stupid. I have several Promise cards BUT I dont see anywhere to plug a SATA cable into one at. They are all made for the ribbon cables that are for the other type hard drives.

I am hoping that I am understanding correctly in that I can have both SATA drives and regular drives in use at the same time.

I do not know what I would need the Promise card for as the P4P800 board that I have has 2 SATA cable connectors on it.
So maybe I am not understanding. I do not want these drives swiped striped or smeared across each other I want each drive for itself so if I dont have to do that RAID thing I dont want to.
If you have questions ask as I will refresh this page every 2 or 3 minutes until I get thjis resolved as WIndows and their Plug N Pray just isnt working for me at all.

Tara

[glc]

You plug the SATA cables into the SATA connectors on the motherboard, connect the drives, and boot it up. Follow Xiun's procedure. If you can't find the connectors, refer to your manual.

[KaraokeRulzz]

I have followed these instructions and the drives are still not being seen.

All of my other drives are there and they are still named correctly as I have even checked to make sure none of them were renamed by windows


I just dont understand why the drive isnt being seen.

TARA

[Panama Red]

Do you have the SATA/Raid option disabled in your BIOS? There are several SATA related settings in BIOS for your motherboard. May want to break out the manual and review the options.

[glc]

The drives are not going to be seen in My Computer until they are partitioned - do the drives show up in Disk Management? If so, just right click on them and partition/format them.

[Xiun]

just to confirm, every drive is connected to the motherboard already, correct?