Ok, over the past 2 days I have been in the process of building my own custom computer. I finally have everything set up and ready to go. I hooked up the computer and started to install Windows. A message appeard during the instalation which said that I could not install windows because no hard disk was found. I looked in the C MOS/BIOS and it it only found my DVD drive(Which works fine sofar).
I am using a Western Digital 160GB SATA hard drive. I have all the connectors hooked up where they belong. Needed to use the sata power adapter because sata drives don’t use the normal 4 pin power port. I plugged the sata cable into the proper port on the motherboard. I am only running one drive so I am not using a RAID array. For somereason, my motherboard can’t find it. I have tried everything I can think of to fix it. At the moment I am searching WD’s site trying to find something helpful. I bought the drive as an OEM so I have no user’s manuel. Do I need to format the disk? Do I need to install drivers? Is the disk just completely uesless? What about the jumpers? How do I need to set them up?
Any help will be greatly appreciated. If you need more information regarding the setup of the drive, please ask. I want to have this fixed as soon as possible and I knew you guys could help.
It is possible that the cable connecting the harddrive to the motherboard is broken. I had a friend with this problem, and after replacing that cable everything worked fine.
check your manual for jumper settings. I remember having to move mine when I installed a hard drive on the computer i built. sometimes motherboard mauals have jumper info. Also, this is a wild guess because I am not very familiar with sata but make sure that your bios is looking for sata hard drives and not ide.
like i said its a wild guess, check my link thats better info than my shot in the dark
Actually i just checked my flash, i have an ide hard drive on a motherboard that allows SATA and didn’t see anyway to change anything like i said earlier. Now my motherboard has a SATA RAID utility that it asks me to enter on boot, do you have something similar pop up on yours? i don’t know if that would do anything or not.
yea, I can choose what drive I want to boot off of. I have it set as my dvd drive now. But it doesn’t give me the option to boot off a HD since it doesn’t recognize that it’s there.
I had the exact same issue and I solved it. What you need is a floppy drive and a floppy disk. Download SATA Drivers (they’re on the net) and copy them to your floppy. More than likely you should have gotten this disk with either your motherboard or your hard drive. Run installation from the cd like you said you were doing. At the beginning of the installation, it will ask you to press F6 at the bottom of the screen to install any RAID drivers or other hard drive drivers. Do it. Install the software through the crude interface. It will then proceed and it will recognize the hard drive. Then install like normal.
I have to do this everytime I do a full format (for health reasons). Hope that works.
I have tried this already. When i press f6 in the beggining of the windows instalation, it brings up a screen asking for a floppy disk with the correct drivers. There is only one problem. I don’t have a floppy disk installed on my machine. Can I do this using a cd? Or do I just have to borrow a floppy drive.
you need a floppy. I am sure this will change in the future to usb. the 3.5 format is barely alive. lots of mobo’s can boot from usb now.
but sorry, i think you still need a floppy!
Yes, you need a floppy for this. The windows installation will only check floppy drives. I had to strip one from my brothers computer. You only need it for this one step though, after that, you can take it out like I did. If you don’t have one lying around, you can buy them for very cheap.
Ok, I talked to someone from WD and they suggested the same thing you did. They said the drivers I need are on the motherboard cd and that I needed to put the sata drivers on a floppy and then try again. I have an old floppy drive and I put it in my comp. Now I am looking for the right driver to put on the floppy. I am browsing the cd and this is what I see in the Drivers file:
4in1, AMD, Audio, LAN, Promise, USB2, and VIARAID.
Which one do I need to put on the floppy? This might be a problem. All those files combined add up to 117MB. None of the files are under 1.44MB. How could I get this on a floppy?
This is really starting to make me mad. Why can’t this stuff just work right the first time. :x
I clicked on the VIARAID file and found a file inside that which said “SATA.” Is this the one I want? It’s only 580kbs. Inside that file there was a list for mutiple OS’s. Do I need to put them all on the floppy or just winxp?
hate to repost the same wuestion but what kind of motherboard do you have
If it is an ASUS like you mentioned when you were purchasing parts i believe this should work. I have been researching an answer for quite a while now, this is not a shot in the dark
install floppy drive on new comp
put motherboard support cd in new comp
boot computer off of the CD
you should get a prompt to create a floppy disk with SATA drivers
Choose the option that best fits your needs
insert floppy
create floppy
reboot with the floppy and install the drivers
If you give a motherboard name i can tell you more.
sorry for not answsering you question. You are right. I am running an ASUS A8V Deluxe.
I put the ASUS cd in another computer and browsed it’s contents. Can I just put the correct driver on the floppy and then stick it in my new comp? Which exact file do I need to put on the disk? A .dll, a system file? What exact file do I need to have on the floppy?
um no. I guess I can though. WD tech support didn’t tell me to do it that was but I guess it will work. I’ll give it a shot. I still need to know what file to put on the disk.