New hard drive not recognised

Hi,

I had to install a new hard disk(Maxtor 500 Gb SATA), but cannot install XP (or Ubuntu), because the disk is not recognised. How can I make it recognised?

Thanks

If it is sata you need the sata drivers for it.
If it is an older system it may not recognize such a large drive.
We need more information
What kind of computer exactly? what type of harddrive was in it?

Does the bios recognise the disk?
What motherboard do you have?

The previous disk was a Maxtor 160 Gb SATA. It's a MSI K8T motherboard and the BIOS does not recognise the disk.

K8T Master2 FAR(MS-9130)
K8T Neo-FIS2R(MS-6702)
K8T Neo-FSR(MS-6702)
K8T Neo-V(MS-7032)
K8TM-ILSR(MS-6741)

5 flavours, 3 basic versions.

Can you see any of that data on the mobo?

K8T NEO and below that MS-6702 ver 1.0

So may be this one

but I think it is this one

Take a look at the pictures, which one matches your motherboard - they are different.

Downloads are here One of the bios updates specifically addresses the onboard raid and sata rom.... but download the latest bios and flash to that.

NooNoo, I think the pictures are the same, but I will have a closer look tomorrow and let you know.

Thanks!

A side-by-side for comparison purposes. Lower left corner has the greatest difference.

;

Thank you, it's the left one (NEO FSR).

ok so this is the board click on the bios tab on the page to download the bios version 7.1

Downloaded it and put it on a floppy, restarted the PC, but then nothing happens?

Instructions for manually flashing are here:

http://www.msicomputer.com/support/BIOS_AMI.asp

Read carefully, ask questions if in ANY doubt.

Will do it, but just found out the floppy drive is not working properly (it's the PC of my kids.....). We'll continue!

You can flash in Windows, just don't use the live update!

NooNoo, can you explain "You can flash in Windows"?

Go to the bios page and scroll right down to the bottom. On the left there is an online service, on the right live update (yah I know, I meant don't use the online service). Download the live update client and follow the instructions for updating the bios.

But I don't have Windows installed?

Oh, sorry... then you need a working floppy drive...

Edit... sata, remember, sata!! Sorry long day...

Or put the old drive back?

I know it may sound stupid, but I have problems with the old drive too. It had Windows/Ubuntu installed, I formatted the drive, but when I want to install Windows I get a Grub (22) error. Probably a boot loader remnant. And no floppy drive.

Know anyone with a floppy drive? Got an old ide drive?

I have a new IDE drive, but how can I connect that one? Can I use alternatively an USB-floppy drive?

If your system recognizes the usb floppy yes.
You can also put the old drive back in.
If your old drive just needs everything cleaned off to do a fresh install of windows then download this and make a cd and boot ot the cd and clean the drive off.
http://www.seagate.com/support/maxbl...stSetup.en.exe

Download it to the computer you are using to talk to us here and then double click it
and install it. Then it will allow you to make a bootable cd with the harddrive tools on it to remove that grub loader and prepare the harddrive and install windows xp or vista or whatever. After you are done making the cd you can remove maxblast from the computer you are on.
Once you have a basic windows on the old harddrive you can use the windows tools NooNoo pointed you too to flash the bios.
Once thats done you can install the maxblast to your old harddrive and it will allow you to copy the windows from the old 160 gig to the new 500 gigi

Thank you, will do that and keep you informed.

I think Ferrit was thinking the old hard drive was IDE... wasn't the old hard drive SATA and the IDE drive is spare?

The old disk was SATA, as the new one. I have a spare new IDE disk.

OK, let's do this the quick way.

You don't need anything fancy and you have a choice.

Set the ide drive as master and attach it to the primary ide
Now either download a bootable dos cd or just install windows xp - probably easiest to just run the xp install. Don't bother with drivers unless you need to get to the internet, just get to the desktop. Then with the msi client flash the bios. Remove the ide drive, hook up the new sata and see if it solved the problem.

I attached the IDE drive and am now installing Windows. So we have progress!

good stuff.

Wonderful carry on !!!!

Thank you for the encouraging words. I need them I encountered a new problem, the Windows setup could not read a file so the installation was aborted. The same happened when I installed Ubuntu.
Well, I see it as a challenge...

Installed XP home, next problem is that the network card is not recognised.
How can I see which BIOS version is installed?

OK, the network card is installed after windows has been installed... so does that mean you have got your new bios installed, got the 500gb SATA installed and got windows installed on the 500gb sata... or are we back at installing windows on the ide drive?

I linked you to the drivers on post #7 but here they are again.

The bios installation version you either need to run a tool like www.belarc.com in windows or hit the pause/break key when it first starts up - it's usually shown on the screen above the RAM amount in MB and the hard drives detected.

In XP, you can use start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information;

It shows Bios version also.

Installed the drivers, now the PC freezes every time.....

Since this is a Clean install, did you install the Via 4-in-1 chipset drivers FIRST?

No......
I think I keep you busy......

'Installed the drivers, now the PC freezes every time..... '

If you meant when booting up..

Start in Safe Mode, uninstall the Network Drivers, finish booting.

Did it?

If so, use your other comp and download to (something) the Via chipset drivers from that link Noo Noo gave you.

Install them. Reboot. Then try the ethernet drivers again.

It freezes after everything is started. So next problem is to install the VIA drivers, which is not possible in safe mode and not when the system constantly freezes.