sata drive help!!!

okay so i just put a 250 gb hard drive in my laptop.. i am trying to put xp on it but setup is not detecting the drive.. i am installing it on a clevo d900k.. so yes it is capable of dual drive setup but im only using one drive.. does it matter which cable it is attached to?? and are laptop drives the same where you must put the pin saying if it is a master or slave?? help please!!

 

Did you slipstream the SATA drivers into the XP install? That's one possibility. On ThinkPads, I know you have to set the drive to compatibility mode in the BIOS to get it to install.

 

On some systems, you first have to enable the SATA controller in BIOS. (I spent a good while wondering why a Dell wouldn't detect new harddrives... Turned out 3 of the 4 SATA ports were disabled in bios)

 

I don't think SATA has any master / slave arrangement because each device has its own channel.

You first challenge is to get the new HDD recognised by the BIOS. Does it show up in the BIOS setup screen? If not, fiddle around until the BIOS sees the HDD.

What version is your XP? It may not include SATA support or it may not have the drivers for your SATA hardware. Did you see the "Press F6 to install a driver" option at the start of your XP installation? I think your dual HDD option means you have something other than normal Intel hardware. By default, XP looks for the driver on a floppy disc. I'm not sure whether it will look on a USB stick but it is worth a try. Otherwise, get nLite and slipstream yourself a new installation CD. You can put all the other Clevo drivers and, if your XP is not SP2, build in SP2.

John

PS: Please amend your signature to conform to forum rules.

 

okay well bios recognizes the hard drive, but i dont have a floppy drive.. i cant install the raid drivers unless i have one.. so i guess i will try using nlite.. any other suggestions??

 

hmm thats odd.. i tried a cd that is marked sp2 and bam.. it works.. i thought the cd i was using was sp2.. problem solved..