Loading OS to SATA hard drive

[isup]

Trying to load a fresh install of Win2kPro onto a SATA hard drive. At setup message says no hard drive is installed so setup cannot continue. Hard drive does not have S.M.A.R.T. feature. Is there a difference to loading OS onto an IDE and a SATA hard drive?

[carl3p]

No. Sata should actually be simplier. Its plug and play.
Although many people seem to have difficulty. Search TechIMO, proly 30 similar threads. My new build was with Sata drive. Simply put machine together and booted off cd-rom.

Obvious things to check: you have the Sata cable and a power connector plugged into HD. Try another Sata cord. Try the second Sata connector spot in mobo.

[sechs]

I'd suspect that you might need a driver for your controller. If Windows doesn't have a driver for your SATA controller, then it won't see the drives attached to it.

[isup]

Downloaded and installed drivers. Found SATA drive and installed OS.

[frostbitetwice]

Sechs, is that all so true for ata drives. I have one that is not being list as a drive.

[flipper812002]

frostbite try this. right click my computer and go to manage. then in the window that opens go to disk management. See if the drive is listed there. If it is then it is recongized by windows and might just need to be formatted. Most oem dives you buy have to be formatted that way as the oem means they come with no software and unformatted. If it does show there and you want to formatt it just right click on the drive letter and go to formatt. Please be sure if you want to formatt it in fat32 file system or NTFS.

[WestCoastBaDBoY]

Originally Posted by frostbitetwice

Sechs, is that all so true for ata drives. I have one that is not being list as a drive.

The real problem isnt the fomatting of the disk. the problem is the PARTITION
there is all kinds of utilities for doing such. if your using the partions will primary or extended types. The partitions tell the software were one "virtual hard drive exists) recent versions of windows by default want to create one drive the size of the whole disk of the primary sort call it "C:".

The ansawer to your problem....

your trying to use win2k or xp i assume so what you need to do is set your boot priority to boot from cd rom in your bios. then boot into windows text mode setup by pressing a key when it says press any key to boot from disc on your screen.

Next your windows into text mode setup with a blue old dos looking screen it will enumerate your hardware and load drivers for it. then it will load windows setup . you have to agree to the end user licencse agreement by pressing f8.

It will search for previous versions of windows now, and it will see your drive and any other drives you have hooked up.

press escape to goto the instal windows from scratch rather than repair and existing instal.

PAY ATTENTION HERE CLOSLEY

You will see all ide disks and all partions on them now. one will say raw as the file system type. the others with say fat32 or ntfs in that colum.
Select that drive and press c to create a partition, it will ask you the size
and it will have the full size sitting there waiting for you to press enter either go with that or make several partitions making a smaller ones and then pressing "C" again to make partitions. when your done making your partitions unless you really do need to instal windows just turn ya pc off and take the disk out.

I know people think you shouldnt do this but it is ok to press the buttom off just dont hold the button. acpi turns windows off properly as long as you dont hold the button. but if you hold it for 3 or 4 secs then the motherboard takes over and shuts down.

there you go buddy...enjoy the new drive.