[Mxrider]

OK, I have noticed a trend with people building their first computers, such as myself, having problems getting thier OS installed on their HDD. I have found several articles concerning this, but none help me with my PARTICULAR problem. I finally finished assembling my new pc, and after some tinkering got everyhting working. It boots to BIOS fine, recognizes my IDE CDRW drive, and when i enter CMOS, it doesnt recognize my HDD. I am using a Gigabyte NF4 GA-K8NXP-SLI mobo and the HDD is a brand new WD GenII Caviar 250GB 7200RPM drive(Model number is WD-2500KS. 16mb cache, the wroks. I originally had it installed in the SATA 133 port, and after the initial boot screen, it went to a black screen to detect raid utilities. The important part said "WD 237GB......." Then the line under that said "No usable devices detected!" or something very close to that. This seemed very strange to me, seeing how it said no device detected, then it said the HDD specs right above it. So when i enter my bios, got to Cmos, it recognizes my sony CDRW as being the slave on IDE channel 0, odd, as i have no other device plugged in. So, on my first try, after my OEM copy of Windows XP Professional Edition SP2 arrived, i tied to boot from my CD, nothing happens, As i have never dealt with Installing windows on a new comp before, i searched on the web a little and fixed this. So on the first successful boot from the windows CD, after it loads the files, and i get to the setup, I get the famous "No Hard Disk Detected, please resart by pressing F3" error. So i go about looking on the internet again. I come across a sight somewhere that said that this person had to install some drivers for SATA by pressing F6. I then look for drivers to download, because no drivers came with my MOBO, and Gigabyte doesnt have any SATA drivers to download for that MOBO, which led me to believe, as it s a fairly new model, that they came pre-installed. I then go to Western Digital's site. After spending some time there, I realized that the DataLifegaurd11 Dos mode download was designed just for this. I downloaded it, put it on a floppy, booted from it, and went through the tutorial. I got to the point where it gave me some options, When i clicked configure Hard drive, It didnt have any drives recognized! I restarted and went to CMOS, my drive didnt show up. Some sites said that SATA might not show up on CMOS, so i wasn't alarmed. I switched it over to SataII, Which still didnt allow it to show up in CMOS, went through the Data Lifeguard diagnostic, and it still didnt recognize it. I basically ran out of options that i myself can think of.

Here's a list of what i know
1.Everything has power including the HDD
2.The Data cable is installed properly on the HDD and mobo
3.Don't need to worry about jumper settings because it is SATA
4.My system semi-recognized it at one time
That reminds me, that once i switched it to SATAII, I didnt get any info on it from the black raid screen that showed it earlier.

I have run out of ideas, and am in search of help, and i believe that I have provided ANY and ALL information i can concerning this, and am in search of some help. I am open to anything, and will reply back to any response as soon as i can. Thanks in advance!

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Hi mxrider-
Here is a good manual on configuring SATA for you mobo, from their website. this should give you any info you need. the steps are basically the same for setting up a single sata drive as well, just dont do the parts that refer to striped or mirrored raid configuration.

any questions, post back, we will try to get you going!

[audioboy]

Hi mxrider-
Here is a good manual on configuring SATA for you mobo, from their website. this should give you any info you need. the steps are basically the same for setting up a single sata drive as well, just dont do the parts that refer to striped or mirrored raid configuration.

any questions, post back, we will try to get you going!

[The one]

is it in windows it cannot detect the mass storage device, if it is the case press f6 a few times when it says "press f6 to load raid" and u will also before doing this need to find the sata drivers on your motherboard cd and create a floppy disk.

[Mxrider]

That is a good guide, and would have been good if i had found it earlier, but that doesnt help my situation, I have all the integrated periphereals enabled that should be, but when I enter Hard Disk Boot Priority, the only thing that shows up is bootable add in cards. The mobo does not recognize the hard drive at all. I am going to clear my CMOS and start from scratch again to see if that helps, And, I also noticed that the SATA 2 is controlled by the Nforce4. And either in the guide or in my owners manual, (I forget which) Its says something about having to install certain drivers to get the SATAII to work. My HDD is backwars compatible with SATA150Mbps, so I switched back to it from SATAII. It didnt make a difference, the mobo still acts as if there is no HDD connected. I am starting to wonder if i just have a bad drive. Any more info or suggestions would be wonderful, Thanks.

Andrew J. W.

[Mxrider]

Guess no one has any more suggestions?

[The one]

what is the model of the board u r using?

Edited by The one, 04 September 2005 - 08:16 PM.

[Mxrider]

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI or just K8NXP-SLI, depends on what you are looking for on their site.