SATA HDD - Gone AWOL

[quant]

Hi eveyone

Just built a new Intel Core 2 Duo based system with ASUS P5B Delux mobo. I installed a new Seagate 320G SATA II HDD as a main drive and recycled an old Maxtor 60G IDE for extra storage.

Unfortunately the HDD came without a floppy with SATA drivers and I did not make one in advance. On the first boot up both drives seemed to have been recognised in the BIOS, with the default SATA drive configuration as IDE. However when partitioning, only 130G of available 320G were recognised on the Seagate. I nevertheless proceeded to install windows XP (SP1/2) and once completed the system shows I have only one 60G HDD. Seagate just gone AWOL.

The strange thing though is that when you go into the drive Properties/Hardware, both drives are shown as 'working properly'

So, what do I need to do now?

1. Reinstall Windows, and install that SATA Drivers in the process? If thats the case, would the Intel ICH8 32bit RAID/AHCI driver disk (which I subsequently created using the supplied Asus utility) fit the purpose? Once installed, would simply configuring SATA as AHCI solve the issue?

2. Announce bounty on its head and wait that someone finds it?

Sorry guys if that's a silly question, but it does seem bizarre that in this day and age drivers would not be supported upon the initial Windows install

 

[Zaphod]

The original release of XP didn't support LBA-48, so it's limited to seeing 128G of the drive. If you want to use the big drive as a system disk, you should make a slipstreamed SP2 and install from that. If you don't need the drive to host the OS, you should be able to set it up correctly in drive manager once you have installed the service pack.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/303013

 

[Geo]

Can't he just SP2 from Windows Update? He seems to be able to boot.

 

[Ty]

Can't he just SP2 from Windows Update? He seems to be able to boot.

Installing SP2 AFTER he's already got pre-SP2 up and running won't help him as his partitions are already set and XP doesn't have the ability like Partition Magic to adjust them after the fact.

The other alternative he can do is use his HDD's overlay driver, THEN install XP though I'd personally I'd prefer the slipstreaming solution if it can be done.

 

[quant]

guys, thank you, all helpful advice. :smile:

I ended up creating the SATA driver disk and then reinstalling Xp with installation of SATA driviers on the initial boot up. All drives are properly recognised now. The only downside is using the older IDE drive as my system disk, but I guess i could live with that.

 

[Zaphod]

One thing to be aware of should you ever need to wipe the (old) system disk and reinstall XP (RTM). At first boot it will want to check your drives for errors. Don't let it, as it will misunderstand the partition table and - in an attempt to 'fix it' - royally screw up the file system. Better still, if you have to reinstall (and don't have a slipstreamed SP2), just unhook your new drive until you have SP2 up and running.