SATA Installation problem

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I’m attempting to upgrade my daughter’s PC to Vista, and replacing the hard drive in the process.
The current HD is a 40Gb IDE drive, and I’ve swapped it out for a 500 Gb WD SATA drive, the motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe.
This mb does have 2 sata sockets, ready for RAID installation, but I only want to use one.
When I attempt to install Vista, it can’t find the HD, and it also doesn’t show in the BIOS, which appears to be geared for PATA IDE drives only.
I’ve tried the original system CD, which has a folder for SATA, but the Vista install doesn’t recognise the drivers there.
I’m at a loss how to make progress, am I doing something wrong?

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If the drive doesn’t show in BIOS, something is installed wrong and Vista won’t see the drive either. Did you install the SATA power plug as well as the data cable? Did the drive come with an installation guide? If not, you can find one at http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?level1=6&lang=en .

Jerry

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In the BIOS, are SATA drives turned on/auto detect?

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Yes, check your BIOS settings to ensure that SATA is enabled over IDE as tfspry suggests, otherwise your new drive won’t be recognized anywhere.
First step is getting it recognized in the BIOS, then, if there are any driver issues they can be worked out after the fact.

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IF you do not have the manual.Here is a link;http://www.fixya.com/support/p500459-asus_a7n8x_e_deluxe_90m7a770g0eay/manual-10972#
If you do go to chapter 4.3.5 it will explain everything you need to know.

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I’ve read the manual, and I ‘ve installed the drive OK, thanks.

The problem seems to be the failure to install the driver supplied on the OEM CD during setup.

However, I found an unusual way round the problem, I installed Vista on the original [PATA] IDE drive then made an Acronis True Image copy of the partition.
I then restored this copy, both the windows partition and the MBR, to the new [SATA] drive, and it works perfectly.

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Something that’s not been mentioned, is that the older mobo’s that had like two SATA ports on them were built for SATA 1, and not SATA II.
A SATA II hard drive cannot even be seen on a SATA 1 mobo. A jumper is required to be installed on the back of the SATA II drive for the old SATA 1 motherboard to see it.

This may not be the case here, but it may be a problem for someone else reading this forum.

The very first time this bug bit me, I wound up taking a brand new SATA II hard drive back to the store where I bought it (150 mile round trip) only to have the salesman stick a little jumper on the back of the drive and hand it back to me. BOY, did I ever feel stupid.

Remember, SATA II drives can only be seen on a SATA II motherboard, without the jumper.
JFYI :rolleyes:

The Doctor 😎

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