[ElSinus]

Hello,

I recently bought a new Western Digital 160GB SATA Harddisk, which I connected to my mainboard with a VIA K8M800-CE + VT8237R chipset. My old harddisk (20GB IDE) is also still connected to the mainboard. I'm planning to install windows XP on the new harddisk, but the problem is that my new SATA harddisk isn't recognized in my BIOS. If my old harddisk is connected to the mainboard, that is the only harddisk that shows up in my BIOS and if I disconnect it, no HD at al shows up in my BIOS. Does anybody know what setting I have to change so my new SATA HD is recognised.

Thanks.

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Double check you have it connected up correctly. Can you tell me what motherboard you have please? (make & model number)

[Samm]

Double check you have it connected up correctly. Can you tell me what motherboard you have please? (make & model number)

[ElSinus]

My mainboard is the K8MM-V Series (MS-7142 v1.X) micro ATX mainboard produced by MSI (Micro-Star International). I checked all the connections and everything seems fine.

I hope you can give a sollution.

[Samm]

Go into the bios, under integrated peripherals, there should be a setting for SATA-IDE controller. Make sure this is enabled

[audioboy]

Hope you dont mind if I butt in on this one samm. your probably sleeping over there as I post this...

you will need to do a couple things to boot to SATA. the first is what samm said, make sure onboard SATA controller is enabled in BIOS.
next in BIOS, make sure your boot order is set for floppy, then CD. remove the option to boot from HDD (this is for IDE drive, which you dont want here).
next there will be a setting saying enable boot to other device. this must be enabled. save changes and exit BIOS.

if your mobo came with a floppy containing the SATA drivers, get it ready. if not, go to the MSI website, look up your mobo, and download the SATA drivers. these will be needed on a floppy drive for the windows install.

I would recommend disconnecting your IDE hard drive, to ensure nothing happens to it by accident. Now you are ready to install windows. load the install CD, and boot up. there will be a prompt along the bottom saying to install 3rd party SCSI or raid drivers, press F6. do that. insert the floppy disk. when it prompts for what type of drivers, select "S" for SCSI.
it will then provide a choice of drivers available on the disk. you will want the one that refers to VIA SATA (may say RAID as well, nothing to worry about). select that, windows will load that driver, and continue to load up windows.
you are set!

windows see SATA as a SCSI device, and as such does not contain built in drivers yet, especially since SATA is newer than XP. hopefully this will be fixed in the next version, and we wont have to jump through all these hoops to get it working.
let us know if you have any questions on this or hit any snags, we will get it working.

[ElSinus]

Thanks a lot!!!! This solved the problem.