My first post, so hello all

Problem:- Currently running XP Pro of a pata H/Drive and last week i put a samsung 500gb sata drive in with no probs.......

Yesterday i decide to drop another 500gb sata in this time a western digital.....but i cant get the pc to see it on boot up.

If i try booting with both satas connected i get check device the bios is not installed message if i unplug the new sata the pc boots, if i unplug the old sata and plug the new one in i get the message above.

I have ran the new sata in an external usb cradle and it works ok formatted and named it ok so i know the drive is ok.

When i boot up and press tab to get into raid settings the box comes up but options are greyed out!!!

What am i doing wrong?

I motherboard is asus A7V600-X capable of running 2x sata and 2x pata drives.

Cheers WW
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Those two 500GB drives are the same? Check for jumpers on the drive it self, you should set the drives to SATA "1" and not to SATA "2".

puntoMX, thanks for the reply,

as posted one is a samsung the other is western digital both 500gb, do sata drives need jumpers????



How do i do that?? (im not totally pc compatible but willing to learn)

Some drives have a place for the jumper at the side of the drive where you connect your power and data cable. Some drives come with the jumper on them, some not.

What we would like to know are the exact model numbers.

The drives that are installed now are:-

Maxtor 6L300RO 300gb pata, this has my operating system on it,

Samsung HD501LJ 500gb sata, used for storing stuff

The above drives are working fine, the new drive i want to install is a:-

Western Digital WD5000AAJS 500gb sata.

Hope this helps

On the last drive image you can se where the jumper goes, this should solve your problem .

puntoMX,

Absolutely perfect mate, Thank you very much for taking the time to help me

One more question if i may, the Samsung HD501LJ 500gb sata i have fitted is only 3 weeks old and started giving me windows write errors(this is why i bought the Western Digital to back up), so i ran CMD and ran chkdsk /r, since then i have had no write errors.

In your opinion am i better off taking the Samsung back as it started playing so early on, and getting another Western Digital?

If YES what would the jumper postion be? as then i would have two Western Digital's fitted.

It could be that the Samsung drive is set on SATA 300MB/s, that would explain the malfunction of the drive. It seems that Samsung doesn’t provide a jumper setting on there drives so it must be set in the firmware, something hard to change by a "user".

If possible, I would take the drive back and see if you can indeed get another WD. On that WD you place the jumper at the same position. Remember that these jumpers are only mending for configuration of the interface and not Master/Slave settings like on the older P-ATA drives.

And you are welcome, this is why we are here, to help each other out and I’m sure you will help some one when he/she is in need of help too .

puntoMX,

Got the new WD h/d in BUT now i'm still getting windows delayed write errors and the drive is unplugged messages for the new drive.

In VIA raid tool box neither of my drives are in an array, should they be?

Just when i thought i was getting on top it all goes wrong !!

the pc just shut down during a burn of a dvd, booted up ok but on the second dvd burn it couldnt read from drive F the old WD h/d, so re booted and then got......Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: System32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys

Does all this mean something??? if so what?

Looks like your motherboard is really messed up. I would try a BIOS update. The RAID setup doesn’t show any thing as you don’t have the drives set in RAID. Also reset your BIOS to default, could be a faulty BIOS setting...

But its the raid that shows the drive is unplugged??!![is that what it should do?]

I will reset the m/b as i cant update the bios as i have no floppy[unless there is another way?]

Also now my external sata USB cradle is no longer seen or should or say the safely remove hardware shows up in tray but the drive is not seen in windows[it was before !!]

guess i and the pc are all messed up!!

Sorry to be a pain WW

anybody got anything to add that might help me?