So I bought my computer parts on newgg.com, and started assembly all the pieces last night. Turns out my Western Digital Raptor was an SATA harddrive, which is faster than IDE, but a bit more frustrating to get the Windows XP installation cd to recognize it.
Parts:
ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard
Western Digital Raptor SATA hdd (1)
The steps are not that difficult once you know how:
1) Plug in 1 sata hdd to the first plug in the mother board with sata cable (see motherboard instructions)
2) Enter Bios, choose boot mode: 1) floppy, 2) cd, 3) hdd. At this point, my hdd was recongized by the bios (a good sign).
3) Disable Promise Raid stuff, enable BootRom thing (I forget the exact wording) – this will enable you to use the VIA raid driver from asus web site, recommended over the Promoise raid driver for speed improvements.
4) Install XP, hit F6 when it asks (bottom of screen), then type “S” to specify the driver for the hdd.
This is where it got tricky for me, I only had the ASUS CD which came with the motherboard, and XP wouldn’t read from it. So I had to buy a floppy drive :-( Then went to asus web site, and found the Via Raid drive (7mb) zip file and extracted it to c:\temp on my win2k box. There is a utility in there somewhere called “MakeDisk.exe”, just run that with a floppy in your floppy drive, and it’ll create the driver disk. Go back into the XP Install, hit F6, then S, and then insert the floppy, just choose the right driver (it should be obvious). Whallah, XP now recongizes the sata hdd so it can then format and install.
Hoepfully this will help people.
You can find the drivers on the “Downloads” page from http://usa.asus.com
Updated: 12/31/04 – Addition of ASUS tech support response:
DESCRIPTION
———–
I installed the A8V Deluxe w/ SATA harddrive, and when installing
Windows
XP, hitting F6 to load sata drivers from Asus cd won’t read the cd.
I also tried booting up into the ASUS cd, and it just ends with a blank
screen and a flashing hyphen 1/4 of the way down on the screen.
My configuration is 1 sata harddrive (not raid), and trying to install
Windows XP. Unfortunately, I do not have a floppy drive or cd burner
around.
NOTES
———–
[12/30/2004 12:28:00 PM - nick23]
Thank you for your support of our products!
Here are the directions for Installing Windows 2k/XP on the Via RAID
controller.
DRIVERS
Download:
We recommend using the latest available drivers when configuring your
RAID
controller. You can find the latest Via RAID drivers on the ASUS
download
site:
http://www.asus.com/support/download/download.aspx
If this site is slow, or is having problems, you can also use our
download
mirror site:
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/download.aspx
Place a disk in your floppy drive. Download and unzip the file, then
extract the contents to a newly created folder. Double-click on the
MakeDisk file, and it will transfer the necessary files to your floppy
disk.
Support CD:
If you do not have access to the Internet, then start by browsing the
support CD included with the motherboard. Look for the DRIVERS
directory.
Inside that is a directory called VIARAID. Open the DRIVER directory
that
is inside. Make sure to insert a disk in your floppy drive, then
double-click on the MakeDisk file in the DRIVER directory. It will
transfer the necessary files to your floppy disk.
INSTALLATION
1. Start with clean, blank hard drives connected to the RAID
Controller.
These drives will not show up on the motherboard’s BIOS screen.
For a STRIPE array: THIS PROCEDURE WILL DESTORY ALL DATA ON THE
DRIVES!
For a SPAN array: THIS PROCEDURE WILL DESTORY ALL DATA ON THE DRIVES!
For a MIRROR: If you want to mirror a drive with existing information
you
will be asked to copy that information to the new drive. PLEASE BE
CERTAIN WHICH DRIVE HAS YOUR DATA. We recommend setting the drive with
DATA on it as the primary MASTER, but it will also work on the
secondary.
We also recommend backing up any information you do not want to lose.
If
you copy the wrong drive, you will lose your information!!
2. Set up your Array:
Upon first boot, the Promise BIOS should tell you that there are an
equal
number of RAID arrays defined as there are hard drives connected to the
Promise controller. Press [Tab] to enter setup, then delete all of the
existing arrays. This will not remove any data from your drives.
Choose
between the defaults, which should be Performance (Stripe), Data
Security
(Mirror), Safety and Performance (Stripe and Mirror) or Capacity
(Spanning).
3. Boot to your 2K/XP CD & start the installation. As Windows is first
setting up, at the first blue screen hit the [F6] key to load a third
party mass storage driver. If you miss this, you will be warned that
there are no hard drives attached. If this happens, restart the
machine
and tap the “F6” Key a few times as the CD spins up. Windows will go
through its install routine, then prompt you for an OEM disk for your
MASS
STORAGE CONTROLLER. Insert the floppy disk you created earlier, and
load
the first driver on the list. This will allow you to use your RAID.
LEAVE THIS FLOPPY IN THE DRIVE!
4. Let Windows setup the partition and install:
Choose install to the empty disk & choose NTFS FULL format, not quick.
If
you don’t have any other hard disks on your regular IDE channels, there
may be a LONG pause after the format; be patient.
5. If your system paused during the install, it will do so again when
booting into Windows. Once the install is completely finished, enter
the
BIOS Setup, go to the MAIN tab, then change “Auto” to “None” for all
channels where no drives are connected. NOTE: This applies to your
regular IDE channels, NOT your RAID Array.
6. Let Windows run through all of its setup routines and updates.
7. You will now be able to use your RAID disk as a storage device!
Please do not respond to this email. If you need further assistance,
contact Technical Support at 502-995-0883 (M-F 8:30 AM – 12:00 AM EST).
My Dear Foo and Ennemy
On Your FirstPage You recommend FileZilla.
You speak of the FTP-Server with
Ravest-Shamir–Adelmann Encryption etc. (right ?
(May be I can not write the name F..zilla correctly ))
In any case take several Anti-Spy detection apps ;
even such ones for 4-digit US-Dollars.
And … The result for F..zilla is … . You can guess.
Actually, no I can’t. You make no sense.
I haven’t used a floppy in 7 years, are you kidding me. Someone should punch asus in the gut.
Its not ASUS fault, its microsoft’s for not putting SATA recognition drivers onto SP2.
Hi,
Thank you very much for this useful info, I would never have found out myself on how to do this.
Really appreciate it!
Regards,
James
I have an A8v MB and WD drive and followed the same steps you did, however when XP Media Center Edition is installing I get a bunch os file not found errors starts of with ks.sys and goes through about 50 files. I tried to skip them but then system won’t work. Any idea, is it windows or Asus?
Bruce kbkane@yahoo.com
ThX 1000 times from Vienna-Austria! I tried almost the whole night to set up my system with sata. also millions of “i-know-everything-about-computer”-Forums didn’t help … till i found your excellent tutorial.
now everything is running – once more: thank you!
peter
Chovy
The step by step instruction you have given was very helpful for me to setup my MAXTOR SATA drivers while loading Windows XP. I had spent about 8hrs trying to figure out what the heck was missing, until someone forwarded me the utl to this site. Luckily for me I had a floppy drive from my old comp. that I removed and didn’t have to buy a new one!!
U get cd with mb… so use makedisk.exe twice!
1 floppy -> fastrakt drivers
2 floppy -> via sata raid drivers
use windows install cd, press f6 in start to install drivers to raid and … blablabla
Those links to the ASUS site are no longer working – thanks big for the BLOG, it is a great help, i have exactly the same hardware setup, except that i am trying to setup a pair of Maxtors as a RAID 1 for safety ’s sake
The link I posted still works. As for the links in the email I received from them, I can’t vouch for those. I was able to fix the problem before I got the email response from ASUS.
Hey sorry i tried to install and i dont noe what a FastTrak Controller is can someone help me out plz i dont noe what to do when my pc starts it says FastTrak Controller not found . BIOS NOT INSTALLED’
plz help..
Can you hit delete and go into your bios before it boots up? I’m not sure what a FastTrack controller is.
Hey, chovy… thanks for being so high up on google’s search for “boot sata asus A8V” :) … saved me a lot of trouble.. incidentally, I just made the disks off the included cd… however, someone would be utterly booched if they did not have convenient access to another machine on which to make the floppies. All the other machines I have are Apples… buuuuut my dad happened to have my old PC laptop running so I was saved…
I wonder who to place the blame with.. I guess MS for not including SATA recognition in the install disc.. but at the least, ASUS should have included a pre-made floppy (I hate having a floppy in here but I knew it would be good for something) and a READ ME FIRST WINDOWS USERS doc stuck at the top of the mobo pack.
Yeah. I think MS is partially to blame, because they probably were slow to adopt SATA, apparently it was cutting edge when they released XP and not that well adopted.
As for ASUS, they could have easily solved the problem by including a floppy, although this still would’ve required a floppy drive, which I didn’t have initially. I suppose we’ll never be 100% independent enough to never need a floppy.
Chovy and all:
A slight variation on the problem you described. My A8V-Deluxe has a RAID1 on the Via controller. I was given a new Maxtor Diamond10 300 GB HD and would like to install it on the Promise controller. Unfortunately, it was OEM and had no documentation and most of what I’ve gotten from ASUS has been about RAID arrays – I just want the Max to be a stand-alone drive. I’ve plugged it in, power and SATA cable, but it is not found. I’m brand new to SATA (I mean infant) so I’m not sure what the hey I should do. The Promise controller is visible from Disk Manager. Anyone got a clue, procedure, or website? Thanks for taking the time (and thanks to Chovy to a nice site).
Steve
Did you install the SATA drivers from floppy (asus) during the XP Install?
You should see the drive when you boot up, if not, there’s some other issue.
hi..
i have a a8v deluxe mainboard work together with amd64 3200+ cpus.
i have done all due to your instruction,but after the windows xp had succesfully copied to the hard drive and i begin to set up.
suddenly came the blue screen.
it seems to be that it have false on the hardware.
i was using a windows xp cd.
and i think that’s not an xp Sp2.
hi !!
just wanted to check something with u .. on the asus A8V deluxe mobo is the bios screen very slow :-( ??? by that i meant to ask if the screen has to go blank and refresh after each key stroke ?? that is what happens on my mobo .. just got it yesterday with 1G ram and the sata raid on the promise controller !!
thanks
Definitely a problem. Not sure what might be causing that. If you can I’d just send it back to the dealer and get a new one.
good site!
I have an easier problem. Got an ASUS p4p800e motherboard, but no setup cd for it (socket478)….cant seem to find it for download on asus site…can anyone help?? thanks
Bob0399@hotmail.com
Thanks! Had the same problem as you did except I had a Seagate ST3200822AS drive.
Followed your step and it worked!
Wow great stuff!
Thanks for the info, I managed to follow the instructions, ran over to my other PC and was able to download the drivers and put it onto the floppy…
Thanks again for the great info!
jotaroh@hotmail.com
Motherboard: A7N8X with SATA
HDD: MAXTOR 160GB SATA
The HDD does not show in BIOS nor before starting win installation!
Can anyone give me a link to some drivers?
Well I have tried this to install a WS Raptor Sata HD. I have an A8V Deluxe MB followed the same steps you did, it did not work. I cant say how many time i have tried this and all falled.
CPU:AMD Althon 64 FX-55, Asua A8V Deluxe, Geforce BFG 6800 Ultra OC Video card. D-link Ethernet card for DSL.
So what gives? It all Windows falt no driver with XP Home. Sure Sata came out before XP but up date people so we can get these raptors installed. Crap throughing $$$ around I can not do….
Gealsc@yahoo.com
i had major problems getting the drivers to load from floppy. I kept getting an ‘unexpected error’ message everytime the board(A8V deluxe) tried to load the drivers before XP install. Turned out the problem was that my board only had Bios ver. 1.008 installed. I had to update to 1.009 before it would accept the drivers.
you can avoid using a floppy, if you make a new windows install CD with sata drivers http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1703&page=1
I had the same problem. Googled, your blog came up, and after reading it I realized I was installing the wrong SATA driver, the Promise , instead of the Via. Got the correct driver off the CD and XP installed without a hitch. Ah the power of the Internet to over come problems. Thanks!
Yup. Lucky for us, we have a working 2nd computer with an internet connection. Otherwise, we’d all be calling tech support.
This is for the original remarks on how to get my HDD to work.. I love you.. I want you to have my babies.. The Asus Website was retarded and did not load properly. I was about to throw my new rig out the window, until you saved it. THANK YOU!!!
Uh…I don’t have babies.
Thanks dude!
You helped me a lot
THANK YOU!!! i spent forever and a day trying to make my seagate barracuda work, but after following those simple steps you layed out, my computer is now up and running windows!
This issue is Asus’s problem… they chose the chipset to use for their mainboards. MS can only put drivers on windows which are certified to work with windows, i.e. the manufacturer has made the attempts to make stable software which then has to be verified. If Asus can’t be bothered to choose a sata/raid controller which is supported that’s up to them. My SATA controller’s are picked up fine by XP RTM using a gigabyte mobo.
The real reason for this problem: Windows XP did not include any SATA drivers at the time of it’s release, because it wasn’t around yet.
Like the others I have been looking at google trying to figure out exactly what is going on. Intitially I installed the A8V Deluxe with an IDE Master/Slave combo. I finally upgraded to a Maxtor 16 MB Cache with 300 GB storage. As you can tell I was getting very upset trying to figure out what in the world was going on. I went to Asus intitially and downloaded the updated SCSI drivers, but apparently they weren’t the right ones. I then read to go to the CD-ROM and that did it. The location for the file was slightly different: F:\Drivers\VIARAID\6420RAID\DriverDisk
Thank you very much! You are truly a wonderful person!
you’re a lifesaver.
can also be accomplished loading driver from USB key if m.b. supports it.
james
I have an Asus A8V deluxe and two WD SATA HDs but I don’t want to set them up on raid, and every driver I seem to download and make a disk of seems to not work. I was wondering if I had still had to have a raid controller or anything.
That shouldn’t be a problem, I loaded 1 WD hd without raid.
Just use the 2nd sata cable as you would 2 ide drives.
Did you disable the bios driver?
You want to disable one and enable the other (I forget which is which, see above).
Youre a flipping CHAMPION chovy.
There are about 10 billion solutions on the web all of which are missing the key info that you had which solved my problem. MAKEDISK.EXE!!!
I tried making my own disk by copying the files and folders from the asus mobo cd and it did make win detect the sata hdd, but didnt work for other reasons.
LEGEND! Two thumbs up from down under.
shaolin.kaveman@gmail.com
If you could tell me if this motherboard the asus A8V has raid 0. I have 2 raptor 36gb drives and can not get the computer to do a raid the way you have said above. The computer wants to do the raid setup after the screen that you say to hit tab on is there and all but it dosen’t show the drives at all. On the other screen *one that flashes after the tab screen* it shows the HD but wants to do a Mirror our stripe but i want to have a raid 0. Please any help would be great.
styxnumber2@hotmail.com
What operating system? Try googling for more info…I’m not doing raid 0. I’m doing JBOD.
Thanks man, this was making me mental.
i have the a8v deluxe 3200+ AMD with a western digital 360 SATA HD. Using it as my main boot drive. I tried the procedure first posted but it didn’t work. Then I downloaded the drivers from http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=1&CatID=1180&SubCatID=143 posted a few posts up and it WORKED!! FINALLY DETECTED THE HD. thank goodness for your blog Chovy!
Thanks for your advice on using the VIA drivers, I spent 3 hours trying to tackle this SATA problem, but your advice was totally correct and worked the first time.
I had the same problem, but the BIOS won’t even recognize my Western Digital SATA drive. I finally found on the ASUS support site that the newer Western Digital SATA drive can transfer at 300MB/s and the older controller cannot negotiate properly with these drives. You have to change a jumper setting on the drive and then it all works from that point on. Just in case some of you are having the same problems.
Hi,
I just got my A8v deluxe running with XP pro on IDE. I want to install my 2 SATA drives which are already formatted with loads of vital files on them.
they are recognised when plugged in but windows can’t see them.
I created a drivers floppy and everything installed fine I think.
But I don’t want to format them so any clues?
Moderately competent
Jim
Geez…I don’t know if you can install WIndows XP on an already existing drive without wiping it out first.
If I were you. I would get a 40gb drive for the OS, and use your sata drives as storage-only.
No I have XP installed already on a 40Gb drive. I just want to plug in the SATA drives and access the data on them.
Hmmm….I don’t know, but I would think that if you can boot up into XP, there must be some windows xp sata driver you can install to add hdd.