Help needed on SATA dirve issue please

Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said the
was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while, I
put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there. *sigh*
I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.

Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
supplied upon request.

Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is it
much better than IDE?!?

hmmm, *oh, dear*.......

thanx - andy

On Tue, 4 May 2004 13:31:15 +0200, "Andy Rose" <>
wrote:

>Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
>Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
>Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
>So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
>connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said the
>was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
>there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while, I
>put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
>Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there. *sigh*
>I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.
>
>Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
>supplied upon request.
>
>Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is it
>much better than IDE?!?
>
>hmmm, *oh, dear*.......
>
>thanx - andy
>

Sata is certainly worth using... single or otherwise.

AFA the Sata drive not being detected, it may be worth setting the option under
PNP in your bios settings to show you are using a PNP system.

I have a ASUS K8V SE D/L board which would not show any connected Sata drives.

However, the Sata drives would be detected if I changed the default NO setting
to YES. This is under the PNP/IRQ settings in the bios.... usually the first
option.

I changed it to YES and all was okay.... very strange I know but it resolved my
problem.... obviously a resource conflict of some sort.
May not work for you but worth a try!

Regards

John

"Andy Rose" <> wrote in message
news:c77usd$2lk9$...
> Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
> Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
> Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
> So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
> connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said
the
> was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
> there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while,
I
> put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
> Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there.
*sigh*
> I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.
>
> Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
> supplied upon request.
>
> Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is
it
> much better than IDE?!?
>
> hmmm, *oh, dear*.......
>
> thanx - andy
>
>
>
Andy,

First read your manual that came with your motherboard and you will see on
page 2-21 and chapter 5 that you will have to install software drivers for
your SATA controller.

Larry

Thanx John,
I'll look into it as soon as I'm home again. Thanx for now,
Andy Rose




"Andy Rose" <> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:c77usd$2lk9$...
> Hello, I really need your help to get this running. I have a ASUS A7N8X-E
> Deluxe motherboard and would like to remove the old IDE 80 Gb drive.
> Instead, I'd like to install the Hitachi 160 Gb SATA drive I just bought.
> So far, so good. I removed the old hd and put the new one in. After
> connecting the cabels and power, I tried to boot the PC. The system said
the
> was no valid Disk found - please check cable. (As far as I could tell,
> there's only one possible way to attach the SATA cable). So after a while,
I
> put back the IDE drive, leaving the SATA one in place.
> Now, the SATA drive is ignored by the system, as if it weren' there.
*sigh*
> I'm sick of spending my time without getting things to run.
>
> Any help is gladly accepted. Any information needed on your behalf is
> supplied upon request.
>
> Please have a heart. Btw: Is there any danger of using single SATA? Or is
it
> much better than IDE?!?
>
> hmmm, *oh, dear*.......
>
> thanx - andy
>
>

in order to use the SATA drive as your boot drive..if you are using XP you
need to reformat and load the drivers for it when prompted...also did you
enable SATA on the M/B by moving the jumper to enable position?..I know the
A7N8X-Deluxe has a jumper..not sure about the E model though

"dino" <> wrote in message
news:B7Mlc.31586$. ..
> in order to use the SATA drive as your boot drive..if you are using XP you
> need to reformat and load the drivers for it when prompted...also did you
> enable SATA on the M/B by moving the jumper to enable position?..I know
the
> A7N8X-Deluxe has a jumper..not sure about the E model though
>
>

An alternative is to load the drivers from your "old" drive via Device
Manager, then clone the old drive to your new SATA drive, using a program
like Ghost or Drive Image.

Although a fresh install is the better option, I use the cloning method
myself. In fact, I shall probably do it this afternoon, I have just
received a new SATA drive.
--
Doug Ramage

Doesnt matter whether you clone or not. If you dont install the sata drivers
it wont detect.
If changing hd you will have to repair the o/s installation, using the F6
option to load the sata drivers from floppy.
Same applies for a clean install.

"Doug Ramage" <> wrote in message
news:c784or$n102$...
>
> "dino" <> wrote in message
> news:B7Mlc.31586$. ..
> > in order to use the SATA drive as your boot drive..if you are using XP
you
> > need to reformat and load the drivers for it when prompted...also did
you
> > enable SATA on the M/B by moving the jumper to enable position?..I know
> the
> > A7N8X-Deluxe has a jumper..not sure about the E model though
> >
> >
>
> An alternative is to load the drivers from your "old" drive via Device
> Manager, then clone the old drive to your new SATA drive, using a program
> like Ghost or Drive Image.
>
> Although a fresh install is the better option, I use the cloning method
> myself. In fact, I shall probably do it this afternoon, I have just
> received a new SATA drive.
> --
> Doug Ramage
>
>

help.

Thank you very much for your responses so far. Sadly, it still isn't
working.
I've checked the jumper settings. SATA support is on by default. The drive
is mouted in the bay and connected to power as well as to the onboard SATA
connector.
I've also checked the PNP settings, there is no Y or N setting. It's set to
auto at the moment.
I also have booted of the XP cd and tried to install. I don't know where to
supply the drivers from. There is a SATA driver download on the net, but
it's over 4 mb, so I don't think that's what I need.
I also flashed the bios to 1.008 version, the newest offered on asuscom.de.
Reading the manual, (which I did already once), didn't help me much. (???)

So here's the situation :

- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe MoBo
Bios ver. 1.008
- Hitachi SATA HD 164 gb, bulk 'as it came'
non formated
- LiteOnDVD Burner on Sec. Slave IDE
- Floppydisk
- No OS installes
- No other HD installed

Please, how to get do I create a drivers disk - where to get the files. How
do I install the single HD?

I'm quite desperate about this, as I've spent over 4 nights on this matter
and really need some sleep.
(aaaargrgrhhhhh..... )


best regards,

Andy r.

On Tue, 4 May 2004 19:29:41 +0200, "Andy Rose" <>
wrote:

>help.
>
>Thank you very much for your responses so far. Sadly, it still isn't
>working.
>I've checked the jumper settings. SATA support is on by default. The drive
>is mouted in the bay and connected to power as well as to the onboard SATA
>connector.
>I've also checked the PNP settings, there is no Y or N setting. It's set to
>auto at the moment.
>I also have booted of the XP cd and tried to install. I don't know where to
>supply the drivers from. There is a SATA driver download on the net, but
>it's over 4 mb, so I don't think that's what I need.
>I also flashed the bios to 1.008 version, the newest offered on asuscom.de.
>Reading the manual, (which I did already once), didn't help me much. (???)
>
>So here's the situation :
>
>- Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe MoBo
> Bios ver. 1.008
>- Hitachi SATA HD 164 gb, bulk 'as it came'
> non formated
>- LiteOnDVD Burner on Sec. Slave IDE
>- Floppydisk
>- No OS installes
>- No other HD installed
>
>Please, how to get do I create a drivers disk - where to get the files. How
>do I install the single HD?
>
>I'm quite desperate about this, as I've spent over 4 nights on this matter
>and really need some sleep.
>(aaaargrgrhhhhh..... )
>
>
>best regards,
>
>Andy r.
>


Andy... the drivers usually come on the support cd that comes with the
motherboard.

Its normally an executable file which creates a suitable driver floppy which can
be inserted and read by XP by pressing F6 when prompted during the early
installation of XP. No doubt they would be on the Asus site too somewhere.

However, from what I gather from your first posting it sounds like the bios is
throwing up a 'No Hard-drives Found message' if that is correct then no amount
of drivers will help. The Sata drive MUST be recognised by the bios first!

Both Ami and Award bioses both have the option to state whether you are using a
PNP operating system, never known it to have an auto option, its usually Y or N.
Its under the 'PCI/PNP' options. (unless your bios is completely different)
If the bios is failing to see the Sata drive and your bios settings are correct
and all else fails it may be worth lifting out all the cards except your
graphics card just in case there's a clash somewhere.

In my case... it was my Audigy-2 LS which was preventing my Sata from showing
up, the Sata drive showed when I unplugged the sound card, even plugging into a
different pci slot did'nt work for me. AIS changing that option in the bios
fixed it for me... IME that setting usually doesn't seem to matter whether its
set to yes or no normally... The joys of computers.. LOL

1:
Just to clarify again... is the system halting with a bios message saying it
cannot find any hard-drives when first booting.?

2:
Or is it XP that cannot find the drives.?

John

John, you seem to be my man. Stay with me now... )

here goes:

Nvidia boot agent:

PXE-E61 Media test failiure, check cable
PXE-MOF Exiting Nvidia boot agent
Disk boot failure, insert sytemdisk and....


that's the last I see.


best regards,

andy