hey guys i was installing new hd in my pc (WD360) raptor 36gb ! here wat i did ! i put both power connecter in there the SATA power & molex ( legacy power ) and on hd says just put one or you will damage your hd ! now when i only had one power supply hooked up it wont install xp it says there are no hd installed ! i have nf7-s 2.0 board ! ata is enable in bios and when i try to hit f4 to ata setting it won't let me do anything keep saying can't format one harddrive ! Please help me set this thing up or did i blow up the hd? how can i tell thanks tank

Something I dont understand !!! You say the error message says cant fomat one drive. Do you have 1 drive or 2 ? Is the drive recognised in the bios ? Is the ata cable connected correctly on the board ?

for one thing, try reading the fine print ON the hard drive and that will answer your question about what power connector to use... F4 only needs to be used if you are going to set up more than one serial ata hard drive in a raid array did you go through the F6 procedure during the beginning stages of a fresh XP install, when it says at the bottom to press F6 to install a 3rd party scsi or raid driver? sounds like no research was done...i did when i got my first raptor and did further research when i got my second for a raid array Abit NF7-s 2500+ @ 3200+ 512 Corsair XMS PC3200 128 meg Radeon 9800 Pro 2 X 36 GIG WD Raptors 3+ Mbps cable connection

when it comes to computers im a newb :( here what i did on xp install i pressed f6 and & asked for disk i put in my nf7-s 2.0 sata disk and it installed the driver after that took about 30 mins to install xp ! everything is working fine ! but i heard about this hd alot thats its realy fast load xp in 10 sec mine load in 40sec :/ .. also they say xp installed in 15 mins and mine took over 30 mins ? did i messed up the hd by plugging in 2 power supply's ? please help tank

Ok the fact you have xp loaded says the drive should be OK. Yes the drives are fast, 10 sec boot time for xp I question that statement. Whoever made it in the first place. I have 2 of these drives on raid 0 array running on the Sillicon Image raid controller. And the boot time is approx 20 to 40 sec with minimum program start up. The only way xp can load in 15 minutes from wo to go is on a pre formatted hard drive. In other words the drive was prepared and formated before installation. The 30 or so minutes for xp to laod sounds about right, fastest load I ever had was about 25 minutes I think. How ever I am not 100% clued in on the board you have ! I would assume your bios has not been updates with the latest version from abit, and also have you setup your bios in line with the manual for SATA configuration ? The other question is have you installed the mother board chispet drivers after installing xp ?

Yes all bio's are up to date ! and i installed the ata driver after xp installation ! well if it was only one person saying that it boots in 15 sec i wouldnt belive him but on newegg.com all review say that this driver load xp in 10 sec and insatllaiton take about 15 mins to 20 mins the most :/ heres the link to review on this hd http://secure.newegg.com/app/CustratingReview.asp?DEPA=0&item=22-144-200 Thanks TaNk79

i created a raid 0 array and i did install xp in just under 18 minutes, with just one raptor it took 22 minutes you only need 1 power connector hooked up, there's a warning on the drive itself about that. it doesn't matter which one you use, if your power supply has the serial ata power connector, i'd use that to free up a molex and to dedicate a power supply lead for your hard drive Abit NF7-s 2500+ @ 3200+ 512 Corsair XMS PC3200 128 meg Radeon 9800 Pro 2 X 36 GIG WD Raptors 3+ Mbps cable connection