[whitwell]

hi . im new to this website. i finally need help with my dam motherbord!!! abit vt7. its all setup with windows xp sp3,on a seagate 200gb ide hdd, running fine.
now i attempt to plugin in my 500gb wd sata hdd. and nothing. doesnt show up in the bioes. evan when attempting a setup . i have the sata drivers on a flopy, i press f6 it does the loading. i choose the driver. then gets to saying that no hard drive is connectd.. have tried to disable raid options in bois and nothing. help me out!!!!

Edited by whitwell, 10 March 2010 - 02:14 AM.

[Advertisements]

You will need the newest BIOS version to support 48-bit LBA, otherwise the controller will not work correctly with hard drives larger than 137GB.

http://www.abit.com......PE=Socket 478

Windows XP SP3 will support 48-bit LBA.

The SATA drivers are here if you need them.
http://www.abit.com......PE=Socket 478

[DaffyKantReed]

You will need the newest BIOS version to support 48-bit LBA, otherwise the controller will not work correctly with hard drives larger than 137GB.

http://www.abit.com......PE=Socket 478

Windows XP SP3 will support 48-bit LBA.

The SATA drivers are here if you need them.
http://www.abit.com......PE=Socket 478

[whitwell]

have updated my sata drivers. checkt my bios, it says it is up to date. should i attempt to update manaully? otherwise still sata not working. im going to by a ide to sata transfer. its cheap option . and try that out.

[DaffyKantReed]

now i attempt to plugin in my 500gb wd sata hdd. and nothing. doesnt show up in the bioes. evan when attempting a setup .

The 500GB HDD should show up in the BIOS. Try a different SATA port on the motherboard and a new SATA cable. Also, check BIOS settings.

[whitwell]

hi this is a messege to every one with the sata problem on abit vt7 mb.

first plug your sata into sata1 on motherboard. then set your jumpers on hdd to 5-6., thats what i had to do.Then power up.

go to bios, disable all ide controllers,ide master,ide slave,ide prefetch,and controller1. NOT CONTROLLER2, as this for cd-rom.

Then make sure that the on-chip raid, sata raid rom are enabled.

set your boot order to cd-rom,floppy then harddrive.restart your system check when the tab window shows up, if your sata labled in there your good to go.and make sure you have your floppy sata/raid disk ready at f6 promt.choose the via serial sata driver. not the others.

Basicly the abit vt7 bord will only run eather ide harddrives or sata drives. thats what i have figured out. you cant run both types at once.

I hope this will help alot of people. as i have managed to sort this issue out my self ,that included 3 hard nights of constant settings to get the sata to work. when it does work, its a dream, fast system all together. so good luck. if you have any ? let me know. il try and help. thanks

[miketwain]

I had the same problem. I run two ide HDD's (Maxtor 100 gb, 200 gb) in mobile docks with my Abit VT7 mb. I decided to utilize the sata ports with a new sata HDD (Seagate 500 gb) after my 40 gb ide stoped working recently (was in a 3rd mobile dock I use to swap back and forth for backup). I installed and powered up the new Seagate 500 gb sata HDD and nothing, it couldn't be seen.

My windows XP disc couldn't even find it either when I re-booted from it as the Seagate instructions say to do. Finally I looked in the windows control panel - device manager under disc drives. The new 500 gb Seagate HDD was there.

I then decided to go to a Maxtor ide program I have on my computer, Maxtor Maxblast 4 (obtained when I bought my previous Maxtor ide HDD's). I opened it and Maxblast found the new Seagate 500 gb drive, so I cloned over the new Seagate from my 100 gb Maxtor ide HDD. Next time I booted, the new Seagate sata drive showed up in my explorer tree. I could then even change the bios (hit del on startup) and after I changed the boot sequence in the bios, I could boot directly from the new Seagate sata drive.

I had tried the Seagate methods that came with my new 500 gb sata HDD, boot from the Windows XP disc, hit F-6 when prompted, etc. , didn't work at all.

I'm not at all an expert in this. I had many mis-starts as I stumbled through this before I found my way into figuring out how to run both sata and ide HDD's on the same Abit VT7 computer motherboard.

I also had to check the following:
1) Abit bios, latest version (v-14) was on my computer. (wasn't, but was easy to flash from Abit's download site.)
2) Sata raid drivers from my motherboard disc loaded. (I clicked on and did the update drivers routine.)

Everyone reading, send me $10 for this instructional help, k?