New hard drive

[tooskinny]

I am putting together a system for the first time and am having some problems. I changed my mother board and got a new hard drive. The BIOS does not find my new hard drive when I try to boot. The mother board is a little older so I had to get a controler card to adapt the SATA hard drive. Can anyone point me in the right direction so I can get this thing up and going.
Thanks

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

do you know the model/make of the controller card? and the motherboard?

If we know the brabd etc of the card we can look on their site and find instructions and a faq that probably will cover the problem.


One bad thing is that on occasion..if the board is really old..is that the newer card needs pci version 2.2 and the board only does 2.1

that happens on occasion...so give us more details of the brands etc and we may be able to help u out.

JP

[tooskinny]

Here are some of the details.
SYBA controler card- silicon image SIL3112A Serial ATA.
Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-7VRXP

I am not really sure how to format the hard drive in general but from what I read here on the net the BIOS needs to recognize it frist. Is this right?
There were some drivers on the card website. I used the windows boot disks to boot and fed in the new drivers but the program said it couldnt see the hard drive.

[John Prophet]

can you tell if it is recognizing the card itself when u bootup?

you should be able to see it listed somewhere on the boot screens.

Maybe you can try it in another slot if you dont see it?

I am not much help cuz I never used sata before.

Did the card have instructions??

did it come with software etc?

[Bizkitkid2001]

Reseat or move the card to a didn't slot. If it still isn't seen during boot up(Mine displays after the first post screen) then somthing is wrong with the card.

If the card is recongnized, but the hard drive sin't, make sure you install the software they came with the card. ALso, make sure you select the correct driver for your OS. The first time I installed the drivers for my ide controller card, I accidentally installed win 2000 dirvers isntead of win XP drivers. If the drive still isn't recongnized after that, make sure you have it jumpered correctly. Check to see if its the cable by trying it with a different sata cable. If its still not ebing detected, the drive might be bad.


I've install only ide controller cards, not sata, so I am not 100% sure on how to go about this either.

[tooskinny]

The screen go by too quick for me to really be able to tell. If I knew exactly what I needed to see I might be able to see it. Sorry I cant tell.
The card did come with instructions. There are several variations for the different operating systems I am trying to do the windows XP fresh installation. I have tried switching PCI slot and cables between the card and hard drive.

Should I take the card back and try another with another one?
Is is possibe the problem is with the hard drive?

As a side note: how warm should my hard drive get? It gets pertty warm for something that is not even being used. Maybe I'm just paranoid. Im just trying to narrow down where the problem may be.

Thanks for helping

[HeadBand]

press the pause key to read the POST

[[Neo770]]

while booting you can use the pause key on your keyboard to help see whats going on. Some time during the boot process the cards bios should display.

Also in the motherboard BIOS I think the boot drive should be set as SCSI.

EDIT: stupid slow conection

[John Prophet]

do you have the power cable on the hard drive?

does anyone know if the jumper needs to be in a certain place for sata??

[rusty4x4]

"Here are some of the details.
SYBA controler card- silicon image SIL3112A Serial ATA."

I have the Silicon Image 3112 controller for my Samsung SATA drive.

If you are installing Windows XP for the first time on this computer, XP will prompt you for additional third party SCSI or other drivers - it will actually ask you to push F6, at which point, it will appear to blow right by. Eventually, Windows will recognize that there was no parallel ATA drive and ask you again for the driver for your SATA drive. Hopefully, you have a 3.5" floppy drive with the appropriate driver. I looked up your mobo on NewEgg, and it does not appear to have the floppy with the retail box (but hey, pictures can lie).

Also, ensure that you have the SATA power cable to the drive, as well as the SATA data cable which attaches to the controller on the motherboard. There are no jumper leads that need to be in place for SATA, but you may need to check your BIOS to enable the SATA controller.

Let us know how this works out for you, or if you have further questions.

Update: See if the controller is included on Gigabyte's site here:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Motherboa...er_GA-7VRXP%20(Rev%202.0).htm

Have to run to a dinner party, but will be back later on.