serial ata not recongized

[ziniker]

I am having issues with my xp os recognizing my internal sata storage drive. I have one hd I use for my os and one hd I use for storage. both are internal sata hd's. I recently reformatted and installed xp on my os hd and assumed i would still be able to read my storage drive having not done anything with it. But after installing xp my bios recognizes the hd, but xp explorer does not. Properties label it as Raw data that needs to be formatted. I know it has a partition and data on it since I was just using it before I reinstalled xp.

Any suggestions how to save the storage hd without formatting and loosing all my data????

[Baddog]

Did you format the OS drive using Fat 32 or NTFS?

[ziniker]

I formatted my OS drive using NTFS file system.

[mobo57]

Is there a driver that needs to be installed?

[fizur2002]

if its labeled as RAW, check for drivers, but windows should already recognize it, if you have any chipset drivers to install, make sure you do so, otherwise your info could be lost and you need to create a partition again.

[ziniker]

I have a gigabyte mobo. As soon as I installed the os i went to gb website and updated chipset driver, audio, video etc. and updated windows (sp2). The drive is still unreadable and shows the drive as being 100% free space and raw data for file system. My mobo only takes sata drives, but could I have missed a step in installing windows (F6, to install chipset) causing the drive to be unreadable until formatted by the installed os??? I just seems like there has to be a way to reinstall windows os without making extra storage drives unreadable without reformatting them. Thanks for any help......

[Sterling_Aug]

F6 during the Windows install is to load the SATA hard drive controller drivers.

Get a floppy disk, copy the SATA drivers to it, then reinstall Windows all over again.

NOTHING will work properly until you install the SATA drivers.

[fizur2002]

what is the model number of the gigabyte motherboard? And Sterling, those drivers you install at F6 are for raid controller drivers, not SATA.

[ziniker]

my mobo is GA-8I915G Pro

[Sterling_Aug]

what is the model number of the gigabyte motherboard? And Sterling, those drivers you install at F6 are for raid controller drivers, not SATA.

My Tyan mobos have SATA controllers onboard. I still need to install the SATA drivers even though I do not use RAID. The hard drive will not boot without the drivers installed during Windows setup.

[fizur2002]

my computer will boot and install on a sata hard drive without the drivers, just have to make sure that boot other device is enabled to do so. But the F6 button is to install raid controller drivers like i said before, he should be able to install his chipset drivers and see his hard drive just fine.