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Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI: SATA drive won't work properly

post #1 of 26
10/25/05 at 5:47pm
Thread Starter 
I just put my new A64 PC together. It boots up fine and everything seems to be OK, but I am having trouble installing Windows XP. After searching Google, this seems to be a somewhat common problem. I am using one HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 250GB SATA.

I booted from the XP CD, it copied a bunch of files from the CD to the HD and then the PC restarts and it is suppose to continue with the installation. But it does not. It starts over with the copying of files. I have read in other forums and tried the different suggestions that they had claimed worked. I've made a floppy for the SATA drivers and hit F6 when the first part of XP is setting up. I've changed suggested BIOS settings. Nothing works, that I have tried. I guess I should have bought a different mobo or just a IDE hard drive.



Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I've tried this...

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/50419/
Quote:
For anyone who gets this GA-K8N Pro-SLI board and has the same problem, this is how you fix it.
NOTE: you must have a floppy drive on the computer you are building to install SATA Drivers.

Using another WORKING computer, with a FLOPPY drive, pull the drivers from the cd that comes with the Mother board. (I know a lot of people hate using the drivers that come with the Mother board, but this will make things easier, then you can upgrade later if you like).
-pop in a unused floppy
-locate the folder BootDRV from the CD
-Load Menu.exe
-(for the GA-K8N Pro-SLI we only have SATA_SB (yellow wire))
select Option G) nVIDIA series ATA (XP)
from then on the files should unzip onto your floppy.
This Floppy will be used when installing Windows XP, when it ask you to push F6 to install RAID Drivers.

To get your Motherboard to see your Hard Drive
My Hard Drive was a MAXTOR Diamond Max 10 300GB

-Go into BIOS
-Locate Integrated Peripherals
-Find the option IDE/SATA RAID Function
-Disable this if it is Enable.
-F10 Save and it should Reboot.

To Check for your Hard Drive
-Enter BIOS
-Locate Advanced BIOS Features
-Find the option Hard Disk Boot Priority
-Enter it and you should see your Hard Drive.
(then i also went to set the boot order to CD ROM, Hard Drive, Floppy just to be safe)
-F10 Save and Install Windows XP and Push F6 when they tell you to.

After Windows installed itself, i went back into the BIOS and changed the Boot order back to Hard Drive, CD ROM, and Floppy.

Hope This Helps
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post #2 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:02pm
ok jordan, i had the same EXACT problem. It was a simple jumper on the hard drive. I find that more ofthen than not, the jumper diagram on the hard dive was WRONG. Keep moving the jumper untill it works. When you boot up, in the loading screen or if you enter the bios, does it recognize having a master HDD drive? If under master HDD it says none, then its a jumper problem. If under master HDD you see your drives name, let me know, and well talk some more.
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post #3 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:12pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. roboto
ok jordan, i had the same EXACT problem. It was a simple jumper on the hard drive. I find that more ofthen than not, the jumper diagram on the hard dive was WRONG. Keep moving the jumper untill it works. When you boot up, in the loading screen or if you enter the bios, does it recognize having a master HDD drive? If under master HDD it says none, then its a jumper problem. If under master HDD you see your drives name, let me know, and well talk some more.
It is recognizing the hard drive on "IDE Challen 3 Master" but it's not an IDE hard drive, it's a SATA.

As far as jumpers on the hard drive, there does not seem to be any. I've never seen a hd w/o any jumper until now.
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post #4 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:17pm
hmm, im not sure then. Ive never used a sata drive in my system. Do they all not have jumpers?
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post #5 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:19pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. roboto
hmm, im not sure then. Ive never used a sata drive in my system. Do they all not have jumpers?
I don't know. This is the first SATA drive I have owned.
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post #6 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:20pm
time for google, i shall return.
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post #7 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:23pm
well i went to newegg and looked at some pics, they have jumpers
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post #8 of 26
10/25/05 at 6:24pm
when you say yours doesnt have a jumper, do u mean it doesnt have the little plastic jumper, or it doesnt even have the pins to put the jumper on.
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post #9 of 26
10/25/05 at 7:08pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. roboto
when you say yours doesnt have a jumper, do u mean it doesnt have the little plastic jumper, or it doesnt even have the pins to put the jumper on.
I must be going blind or something. I don't see any plastic pieces that I can remove to reveal any pins. They are always on the rear of the HD where the power and SATA cables plug in, right?
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post #10 of 26
10/25/05 at 7:48pm
yeah, by plastic piece i meant jumper. I diddnt know if when u said theres no jumper, you mant no jumper on or pins to be jumpered. Its hard to put into words, lol.
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post #11 of 26
10/26/05 at 2:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordan1
It is recognizing the hard drive on "IDE Challen 3 Master" but it's not an IDE hard drive, it's a SATA.

As far as jumpers on the hard drive, there does not seem to be any. I've never seen a hd w/o any jumper until now.
Well I'v seen HDD's w/o jumper but those were like 10 year old 200MB HDDS!!

About the failure. Try a normal ATA. I have an older KT400 Gigabyte mobo and it works well, but a friend of mine who has the KT333/RAID had problems with the IDE controller and the mobo faild to recognize properly the HDDs, and the Raid was always going crazy. He brought it back and got a new one and since then he didn't experienced any problems.
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post #12 of 26
10/26/05 at 5:26pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. roboto
yeah, by plastic piece i meant jumper. I diddnt know if when u said theres no jumper, you mant no jumper on or pins to be jumpered. Its hard to put into words, lol.
http://www.hothardware.com/forum/mes...&enterthread=y

Quote:
Remeber since it's serial you can only have one device per SATA port/cable so SATA drives don't have jumpers. On the Motherboard SATA1 Port is for the primary device, SATA2 port is for the secondary device etc.
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post #13 of 26
10/27/05 at 1:50am
Thread Starter 
I ended up just installing a 250GB IDE I have. The F6 thing did not do anything for whatever reason. Yes, I downloaded the file/s for the SATA drivers from Gigabyte's website and exracted them to a floppy. I never got it to work...
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post #14 of 26
10/29/05 at 9:54pm
Ok forgive me, I didn't bother reading all the posts

SATA should be jumperless, so that shouldn't be the problem.

Whenever I have done a clean OS install onto a SATA hard drive I had to use a floppy provided by the motherboard and hit F6 during the XP setup. My friend who just recently built a X2 4400+ machine with his SATA drive, said Windows saw the drive automatically without any kind of additional drivers.
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post #15 of 26
10/30/05 at 8:16am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZippoMan
Ok forgive me, I didn't bother reading all the posts

SATA should be jumperless, so that shouldn't be the problem.

Whenever I have done a clean OS install onto a SATA hard drive I had to use a floppy provided by the motherboard and hit F6 during the XP setup. My friend who just recently built a X2 4400+ machine with his SATA drive, said Windows saw the drive automatically without any kind of additional drivers.
My motherboard did not come with a floppy so I made my own from the motherboard CD, but when I hit F6 when it ask me to, nothing came up about installing the driver/s, even though my floppy was accesed a one point when the files were being copied...but when Windows restarted the first part of the installation started over again. The next thing I tried was downloading the "SATA RAID Driver, NVIDIA (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows setup to read from floppy)5.10.2600.0507WinXP0.31 MB" from http://www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard...%20Pro-SLI.htm. I ran the file and it copied the files to my blank floppy, but it did the same thing when I tried to install XP.
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post #16 of 26
10/30/05 at 10:16am
so I guess everyone has a floppy drive except for me.. I do have a USB external one, does that work? I plan on upgrading to SATA next time I upgrade my hard drive, so now I know how much of a pain it can be.. I don't see why it's so hard though, but then again I only stick with the letter A when getting hard drives, Abit or Asus.
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post #17 of 26
10/30/05 at 1:13pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dman22
so I guess everyone has a floppy drive except for me.. I do have a USB external one, does that work? I plan on upgrading to SATA next time I upgrade my hard drive, so now I know how much of a pain it can be.. I don't see why it's so hard though, but then again I only stick with the letter A when getting hard drives, Abit or Asus.
I installed my floppy drive just because I needed to install SATA drivers.
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post #18 of 26
11/1/05 at 12:29am
Thread Starter 

Drive works fine now.

All this time it was a my user error. I am using a USB keyboard and did not have it enabled in the bios, therefore it never recognized me hitting F6!!!!!!! I never thought of enabling it because I could navigate the bios with the keyboard just fine. Sorry for the trouble. I must pay more attention to detail next time.
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post #19 of 26
11/1/05 at 3:40am
So the SATA drive works without the nVidia IDE drivers?
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post #20 of 26
11/1/05 at 9:20am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karma
So the SATA drive works without the nVidia IDE drivers?
I think so. When I hit F6, selected "NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER," it accessed my floppy, which installed the NVIDIA SATA RAID driver. I did not install anything additional that XP SP2 would not have automatically.
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