Configuring SATA drives

Thank you very much. I will try it.

Mike M.

Here is what I did and it may be useful to some others who may face a similar problem:
1. On another working computer I opened the CD-ROM that came with the motherboard and from the menu tab selected "Make Disk" and proceeded to copy the Intel SATA driver and Silicom Image driver to two different Flopy disks.
2. On the new computer entered the Bios and made the CD-ROM the priority Boot and changed the EIDE configuratin ( On the main menu) to SATA-RAID, inserted the WinXp Pro in this CD-ROM ( Which is a Sony EIDE variaty and connected to EIDE bus), saved the settings, exited the Bios, computer rebooted and proceeded to instal WinXp Pro. When asked to press F6, I did so. Asked if I wanted to instal a fresh copy of Windows, I said yes (Pressed Enter!), asked if I wanted to delete the previous partition, I said yes (Enter), Asked to insert the flopy with the third party drivers ( Meaning Intel Raid driver), I did so and the same for the other Raid driver ( Silicon Image driver, since this board has two Raid controllers). The Win installer proceeded with the usual routine and installed the Operating system.
3. Both hard drives are recognized by the Bios and OS and the computer is functioning normally. By the way I installed the Win sevice pack 2 and display driver.
4. And now for another problem ( And you thought life in computer world was easy?!!). My second Burner is a Plextor 716SA ( Yes, a SATA DVD +, - burner). When this is connected to any of the available SATA Bus on the Motherboard, the computer hangs at the WinXp screen. I have not found any answer to this problem on the Asus or the Plextor site. May be somebody out there knows the solution and for that I will be grateful. Thanks in advance and happy Labors Day.

Mike M.

It so happens that I have your exact Plextor burner. It's on an ASUS P4C800 board, however. On the first SATA port is a WD Raptor drive. I use the IDE RAID port for my set of Seagate drives. There is also an SATA RAID set which is unused at this time. To use it, I think I would need to disable the IDE port and install the proper driver. I can configure the RAID ports to run as IDE but this only will work with hard drives and not ATAPI types so CD ROMs, burners and such cannot be put on these connections. Is there any possiblilty this is what you are trying to do?

Hello Steven:

I see that we both are from Ohio, you in columbus and I am in the east of Cleveland.
My motherboard is the Asus P5WD2 Primium. It has two sets of Raid, one is Intel with 4 connections and the other is Silicon Image controler with one connection. I have set both of these to Raid in the Bios but not used as Raid. Two WD SATA hard drives are connected to two of the Intel controller's ports and working fine. Ther is one regular IDE controller to which is connected the Sony CD-ROM and is working. There are also two ITE IDE connecters ( Red colors) which are not used at this time. The manual states that these support only Hard drives not optical drives. I am therefore left with one Silicon Image SATA port (With its driver installed) and two Intel SATA ports also with drivers installed. When I connect the Plextor SATA DVD burner to either of these ports, the computer hangs at WinXp screen. There is no other place to connect this optical drive. Asus and Plextor have apparently nothing to say about the situation.
What are you thoughts about this problem? Thanks.

Mike M.

I doubt, not having experience with your newer board, I will be able to offer much in the way of solutions. I would just do some logical troubleshooting. The Plextor drive should work on the same port your HD (if it is SATA) works on. I would also try to assign the Plextor drive as the first boot drive to see if it can launch a bootable floppy. This would verify the drive to work and to work with that port. I will also presume you are using XP w/SP2. You can also try booting in safe mode to see if the drive shows. Having the latest MB BIOS is always a good idea. New MBs tend to get frequent updates in the short term. I am partial to ASUS boards with several in the house and all the ones we order for the school I assist in are ASUS. You can also check Plextor for a firmware update. If XP hangs, there might be something posted in the event log that will offer a clue. It's not much to go on but these are the first things I do when I encounter a hardware compatibility related problem. Good luck.