Help installing SATA drive on Albatron mobo

**Gils0n** · December 8th, 2005, 12:37 PM

Hello all, was hoping maybe someone could help me. I have an Albatron px865pe pro II. The tech sheet for this is here: http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/i....asp?pro_id=51

I just bought a Western Digital Caviar 400GB SATA150 drive from newegg. The model is WD4000KD. I've been struggling to get this working since 8pm last night. The only other drive in the system would be my dvd-rom IDE drive. I've tried all different combinations of channel 0 and channel 1 for this and the HD. Updated the BIOS to a version that supports SATA150. Nothing. Changed BIOS settings around. Nothing. When the PC boots and it detects IDE drives, it locks up. It either displays the WD like it should, or it shows some garbage like bzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbzbz for the drive name. Was finally able to get the PC to detect it and boot to my XP cd to install windows. Waited 2 and a half hours for the drive to completely format. (Didn't use quick format.) Installed the XP pre-installations files and rebooted. Right back to where I started where the PC locks when it tries to detect the drive. Also tried both SATA channels on the board. HELP!!!!

**mercyreaper** · January 9th, 2006, 04:52 AM

If you take a look at this model, it is a raid specific hard drive, even inside windows you cannot format the drive, you have to use NVraid manager, create an array(you can do so just using the one drive) and then windows will recognize and you can format it. Have you tried hooking this up to a raid ata spot on your motherboard? You might have to or you should go into the raid controller during boot and configure it there. I have not tried to use this drive as an install drive, only as a storage on a xp machine that has an install already and I imagine you would have to go into the raid manager in your bios or duing boot to configure it. Good luck and let me know if this helps at all.

**vaidix** · December 22nd, 2006, 08:38 PM

Hi,

This drive "can" very well be installed neatly in XP if you follow the instructions of Microsoft knowledge base article 313348.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348

0. Print the article 313348 and these instructions.
1. You need to insert your XP cd in the DVD or CD drive (which ever works)
2. Change boot sequence to boot from your CD.
3. Follow instructions on 313348 carefully, don't repair or reinstall your XP.
4. When it shows the hard disks, scroll down using up & down arrows carefully to your new disk, and create partition on it by pressing C. Accept whatever bytes it gives. Do not press D on any other disk because it will delete partitions & you will lose data instantly. Yes you can play with C & D on your new disk if you want to create two or more partitions.
5. After creating partition(s), press escape button (escape button is not shown on menu!!). You only see ENTER button to install XP, D to delete partition, C to create partition. Just press escape once, and press escape one more time to get out of the XP setup.
6. Change boot sequence back to hard disk and start XP.
7. You should see your disk in my computer.

Regards
vaidix