Hey everyone,

I decided to buy a Seagate 160 Gig HD in a SATA platform. I'm still running a 5-6 year old PC and I have tried to get SATA to work but it don't.

I had to buy a floppy drive to install my 3rd party SATA drivers so I figured all was gonna be well and I could finally get my new HD in. Well, I got to the point on the XP install where it asks you to put in the disk into drive A and then hit enter. I do that and it just goes into a loop where it constantly asks to put the disk in.

I tried to put the disk into my Dad's PC and all it does is say's A:/ is not accessible, and the disk does not have a physical address.

The only thing I can think of is that my Mobo is not meant for a SATA drive but I'd have to use a IDE drive connected through a convertor box than hooked up to a SATA cable.

Heres a few pictures.

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I'll try putting a sata drive in my Nf7 and see whats up...



EDIT

No go couldnt get mine to run as single sata drive ,the bios doesnt even show it .

Couldnt get the raid utility to run at post with only 1 drive.

Only choice in the bios was to enable Sata Raid

I Even Installed the silicone image 3112/3114 drivers In widows and it still didnt show



I get the feeling you need 2 in a raid combo for it to work.

That's what I figured.... It's such an old Motherboard that it's not even worth putting money into anymore.

Now, I suppose all the newer stuff is very nice these days!

I don't have a spare SATA drive to try on my Abit board, but have you tried just pluging in the SATA drive and installing? I thought the drivers on the floppy were for RAID, not basic SATA.

I think there is an option to disable the SATA in the BIOS. (as RBEIZE posted above) (not sure, can't find my old manual and my NF7s is on a custom BIOS).

E

I don't know what you're doing wrong, but I've been using (am posting this on) an Abit NF7-S v2.0 and have had no troubles like you've had with a single SATA drive.

I've used the included floppy for as long as I can remember. The only thing I could think of is that somehow the driver floppy is corrupted or your drive doesn't work, cause it doesn't sound like it's an issue with the motherboard, just trying to get the A: drive.

The option to enable SATA/RAID in the BIOS should be turned on though, that just turns on or off the SATA controller, not whether or not it's RAID.

Quote: Originally Posted by jcarkeys I don't know what you're doing wrong, but I've been using (am posting this on) an Abit NF7-S v2.0 and have had no troubles like you've had with a single SATA drive. I've used the included floppy for as long as I can remember. The only thing I could think of is that somehow the driver floppy is corrupted or your drive doesn't work, cause it doesn't sound like it's an issue with the motherboard, just trying to get the A: drive. The option to enable SATA/RAID in the BIOS should be turned on though, that just turns on or off the SATA controller, not whether or not it's RAID.

Is there a way I can get that exact disk somewhere? I think mine is indeed dead.... It sat there and tried to read it but it just went back to saying please insert manufactureres disk into the A: drive..

Have you tried here: Universal abit USA - Products

I have this dang board, but can't find the floppy. I would send it to you if I could find it...

Well, I feel really dumb right now.... Apparently the NF7-S V2.0 only supports SATA1 which is 1.5 G/s. I purchased a SATA2 drive. Therefore thats probably why it's not working.

So, I should be able to purchase a SATA1 drive and hook it up directly to the Sata connector on the Mobo.

SATA2 should be backwards compatable. Looks like you have my luck with the 'puters.

E

I did indeed go to Abit's website and they do have the drivers. But, It's a 3Mb file and you can only fit 1.44MB on a disk.... LOL

Heres an update.

I was finally able to get the Silicon3112 drivers to install prior to Xp installation. Things were going well and it asked to do the usual format the partition on the disk so I did that. It went through part of the setup for a few minutes then it said it was going to reboot my system. At this point I know for a fact XP is not installed. So I let it reboot and it starts to setup all over again. I changed the boot devices from HDD-0 to Sata and I even tried SCSI and i got a message like this - Error Message: Windows Could Not Start Because of a Computer Disk Hardware Configuration Problem

So, Will method 2 work ok for me?

Believe me, I'm not giving up..... I will get this drive installed once and for all.
Also, Here's a few snaps of the proceses I've went through.

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Here is a thought:

If you have your old IDE drive with an OS loaded, how about trying to add the SATA drive as a secondary drive, just to check for functionality.

You also might want to try partitioning the drive, make the primary section 100GB or less, I know XP sometimes has issues with drives that are over a certain size (Pre SP-2 I think though)

You then might be able to find a way to install XP from there..though I have never tried to install an os on a secondary drive and I'mnot sure you can.

At least this way you will be able to test the drive's ability to work with your board.

have you tried a modded BIOS for this mobo?
Although it is offtopic I had this mainboard 4 years ago and achieved almost 270MHz FSB!
Check this Italian thread