SATA Nightmare

tomsolomon

Just bought a SATA HDD and DVD drive, my mobo only has 2 SATA connectors and I wanted to instal one to each, the bios recognises the HDD but not the DVD, also when I try to install Windows XP I get invalid sytem disc error. Ive dissabled EIDE and enabled SATA, Ive also tried to set boot to floppy only and CD ROM with no HDD. Im sure its just a bios setting but Im a bit stuck.:o

Nilrem

What is the motherboard?

A lot older/early SATA controllers simply don't have the ability to see an optical drive, as the data communications between optical and hard drives uses slightly different command sets* (for example a hard drive won't need to report "no disk in drive"), and so might not see the optical drive no matter what you do.

I'm guessing your motherboard has an early SATA controller that was added to the motherboards features/chipset before SATA optical drives were ready for the market.

*IDE had the same problem, it evolved over time to have additional features and even now you get IDE raid controllers/PCI cards that lack the ability to see/use an optical drive (or tape drives etc which a full IDE controller could do) , a subtle difference that can cause fun and games as you assume that because the connection fits it's compatible.

tomsolomon

Ive got XP installed onto an EIDE drive and Windows recognises both drives no problem. Im gonna probably have to install using EIDE drive and then put the SATA DVD in afterwards. Yea it is an older board but not to old Abit KV8 Pro. Thought it might have coped. Ill try a BIOS upgrade see if that helps any.

KILL_BILL

have you tried the jumpers at the rear of the drive ?

Shambler

Windows XP does not recognise SATA drives by default, you need to load your SATA drivers when you install XP.

At some point early in the install you will see a message similar to 'Press F6 to load 3rd party drivers' this is when you give windows the SATA drivers on your motherboards driver CD or on a floppy disk after which it will be able to see the drive.