Hello.

I just got a new Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500gb drive for my Asrock K8 Combo-Z motherboard.It was using an IDE drive before I decided to upgrade.

So I put the drive in, remove the IDE drive, start the machine, go into the BIOS to find the new sata disk is set as the first boot option. So I change it so it boots from the dvd-rom drive to install XP. I exit the BIOS and begin installing XP. To install, I press Enter then F8 to agree to the license. Then I get a screen saying words to the effect of no hard disk was found, restart. So I then put the IDE drive in, set that as the master and boot into the XP installation. Device manager showed no other disk. So, I went to the Western Digital site, downloaded the Sata controller for it, then installed the software (which included the driver files) - device manager showed the disk, but not in my computer.So, in the Computer Management console I created a new partition, then it appeared in my computer and I could open the disk, copy files to and from the disk, so everything was ok with the disk. But, I obviously want to boot from the Sata and use that as my primary disk to get the full benefit of the technology.

So I copied the driver files to a floppy disk, rebooted,started XP installation, pressed F6 to install an extra driver, installed the 'Sata Controller' driver, got to the installation screen - still, the new disk wasn't shown. I restarted the computer, booted the IDE drive into XP - the sata disk was still shown perfectly ok. Still, I couldn't get the XP installation to recognise the new drive.

So, I used Acronis, cloned the IDE to the Sata, removed the IDE, booted the computer up, did a repair using fixmbr and fixboot - still, it wouldn't boot or be recognised in the XP installation.

I then booted the IDE drive again, got into XP,copied the xp installation files from the disk to the C: drive, then copied the extra driver files for the sata disk to work. I then began installing XP through windows, and selected the installation files to be on C:/Xpsetup and the installation path to be F:/windows.

Still, wouldn't work.

Does anyone know how to get a Caviar SE16 installed as the primary boot disk in Windows XP Home?

Many thanks!

Need to download the SATA drive from Asrock, not Western Digital. F6 with this.
Alternatively another option is to go into BIOS and change the SATA type from RAID to IDE. Then you won't need to F6 anything.

Hi, many thanks for the reply. I have since tried to install using the Asrock drivers, but failed miserably - still isn't recognised What option am I looking for in the bios?

Thank you!

Somewhere in the BIOS may be an option to determine the SATA type. For a SATA Raid, you'd need to F6 during Setup. For a SATA drive operating in IDE mode, it'll be seen as long as the BIOS can see it. If the BIOS can't see the drive, Windows won't see it either.