Windows XP and Serial ATA

[D@ve]

I have just finished building a new PC that has a Serial ATA hard drive, I can't seem to load Windows XP when I start off the process I press F6 to load the Serial ATA Array driver and then Windows asks me to Select the drive that I wish to install to I can see my SATA H/D there it then prompts me to format it and only offers me NTFS?? After it has formatted and then tells me that no H/D's can be found and to press F3 to Restart??

The Motherboard is an MSI K7N2G and the hard drive is a SeaGate Barricude ATA V (120Gb)!

[Anna]

Try using the Seagate setup disk to format it first.

[scutterboy]

Are you using it in RAID configuration or just the enhanced ATA150?

My Gigabyte board has different drivers for RAID and for ATA133.

[scutterboy]

Sorry I see that you reported having just one drive... So I guess that you aren't using RAID.

Check. Do you have another driver to use the SATA controller not in RAID configuration?

[D@ve]

Sorry after a few phone calls I've managed to sort it! I had to use the Seagate Disk Wizard to configure and format the disk before use!!! Thanks for the feed back guys

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by D@ve
Sorry after a few phone calls I've managed to sort it! I had to use the Seagate Disk Wizard to configure and format the disk before use!!! Thanks for the feed back guys

Who told you that, Seagate, or MSI, or Promise? I am curious why you would need to do it like that. Did they provide any more insight into the reason?

[Rifleman @ Layman's PC]

you can also press F6 at the begining of setup and install the drivers as you do with all non-standard HDD controllers.

[confus-ed]

I press F6 to load the Serial ATA Array driver and then Windows asks me to Select the drive that I wish to install to I can see my SATA H/D there it then prompts me to format it and only offers me NTFS

The windows setup component should offer both NTFS and FAT .... but we knew that .... the question is why not ? .... my guess is that since the seagate drive setup s/w fix-ed it, then the drivers not too brilliant - good enough to use the drive after formatting but not good enough to get the drives geometry and so on .... OR it might be just the same as ATA 133 drives (ordinary IDE drive) where you have to put all the service packs on first before DMA and all that starts working properly .... I'd be interested to know what happens if you used a slipstreamed (with the service packs added) version of setup....

You've fix-ed it but I'd still be interested to know, hopefully I'll be able to find a suck.. - I mean a customer - who can afford all this new stuff soon and no doubt serial ata will soon be the norm rather than the exception....

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by confus-ed
The windows setup component should offer both NTFS and FAT .... but we knew that .... the question is why not ? .... my guess is that since the seagate drive setup s/w fix-ed it, then the drivers not too brilliant - good enough to use the drive after formatting but not good enough to get the drives geometry and so on .... OR it might be just the same as ATA 133 drives (ordinary IDE drive) where you have to put all the service packs on first before DMA and all that starts working properly .... I'd be interested to know what happens if you used a slipstreamed (with the service packs added) version of setup....

You've fix-ed it but I'd still be interested to know, hopefully I'll be able to find a suck.. - I mean a customer - who can afford all this new stuff soon and no doubt serial ata will soon be the norm rather than the exception....

If you ever do find that sucker, I would be just as interested...

[joelen]

You cannot format a 120 GB drive as FAT32 in Windows XP setup. The largest partition that can be formatted as FAT32 in the windows xp setup is 32GB. You can format a drive larger than 32GB as FAT32 once you have installed windows, just not from the setup.

This is not just with serial ata, but ANY hard drive.

If you are not partitioning the drive, the ONLY optoin you SHOULD see is NTFS.

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by joelen
You cannot format a 120 GB drive as FAT32 in Windows XP setup. The largest partition that can be formatted as FAT32 in the windows xp setup is 32GB. You can format a drive larger than 32GB as FAT32 once you have installed windows, just not from the setup.

This is not just with serial ata, but ANY hard drive.

If you are not partitioning the drive, the ONLY optoin you SHOULD see is NTFS.

This all makes perfect sense, and for the most part is common knowledge here. If you really want to help, tell us why was the drive disappearing from the setup after it was formatted NTFS? And why did the Seagate setup utility work, but the XP setup couldn’t format NTFS? Answer that one and you get a cookie!

[kannibul]

Originally posted by D@ve
I have just finished building a new PC that has a Serial ATA hard drive, I can't seem to load Windows XP when I start off the process I press F6 to load the Serial ATA Array driver and then Windows asks me to Select the drive that I wish to install to I can see my SATA H/D there it then prompts me to format it and only offers me NTFS?? After it has formatted and then tells me that no H/D's can be found and to press F3 to Restart??

The Motherboard is an MSI K7N2G and the hard drive is a SeaGate Barricude ATA V (120Gb)!

Any drives over 32GB are formatted as NTFS, under that, you have the option for Fat32 or NTFS.

Regarding the issue about no drives, I would think the driver would be at fault. Contact the manufacturer and see what's up.

[smoke wolf]

Since XP does not speak directly to the hardware, but does speak to the bios, does this have anything to do with XP at all. I know that systemboards come with the max hard drive size capped. Could the drive you are using be beyond the system BIOS capability? The software provided by seagate, wd, maxtor, etc. is generally used to bypass the BIOS limitation regarding hd size.

Any thoughts on this?

[confus-ed]

Originally posted by smoke wolf
Since XP does not speak directly to the hardware, but does speak to the bios, does this have anything to do with XP at all .....

You have the first bit back to front, windows xp directly accesses hardware, just like NT & w2k, its 9x that doesn't - it creates its own hardware reference table called the MS Specification table enumerated (made up from) bios. Try this link if you want to know about the boot sequence in NT based systems

As for the 32 gig limit mentioned earlier, xp setup can't make a partition with fat 32 bigger than 32gig, but it can see bigger drives and offer to partition them.

The disc set-up utility mentioned wasn't of the overlay variety which 'fools' the translation table for the disk, by writing another one ... this was of the format variety, where it has its own little mini o/s to get it booted, then it just formats the drive based on tables of known disc geometries....

The bios in question most definately isn't limiting the disk size that can be recognised, its on a board with SATA drive connectors which are about as new as you can get...

I'm still none the wiser other than my earlier 'guesses' ....
(as ever ! )

[Archangel42069]

Originally posted by confus-ed
You have the first bit back to front, windows xp directly accesses hardware, just like NT & w2k, its 9x that doesn't - it creates its own hardware reference table called the MS Specification table enumerated (made up from) bios. Try this link if you want to know about the boot sequence in NT based systems

As for the 32 gig limit mentioned earlier, xp setup can't make a partition with fat 32 bigger than 32gig, but it can see bigger drives and offer to partition them.

The disc set-up utility mentioned wasn't of the overlay variety which 'fools' the translation table for the disk, by writing another one ... this was of the format variety, where it has its own little mini o/s to get it booted, then it just formats the drive based on tables of known disc geometries....

The bios in question most definately isn't limiting the disk size that can be recognised, its on a board with SATA drive connectors which are about as new as you can get...

I'm still none the wiser other than my earlier 'guesses' ....
(as ever ! )

You hit that point on the nose...I have a K7N2G and a wd 800JB...XP had no problem recognizing it, it just wouldn't partition any bigger than 32GB - which was ok, cuz all I wanted was an 8GB and 2 30's...

By the way, [email protected] kind of RAM are you using...? Mine is Kingston, but Kingston has recently told me that they no longer certify their RAM at all for the K7N2G due to stability problems...have you been able to use the onboard video...?