I have an asus a8v(av8?) deluxe motherboard with an ide drive running the OS. I recently installed an sata drive that lasted what seemed to be a short time. In the event log of the raid tool it shows that there was several times a disk failure but now it doesn't even read that the drive is attached.
I purchased a new one and that drive is also not reading anywhere.
To add to the issue when I looked in the device manager it showed the raid controller with a yellow ? mark. So I installed the drivers from the asus web site but got the 64bit version instead. Now, no matter how many times I delete that it comes back asking for the fasttrack promise controller(amd64). It never showed that before.
I cannot find the motherboard disk.
Thanks for any advice!

You're gonna have to uninstall it using Control Panel > Add or Remove, then try installing the correct version. You can either download the XP 32-bit version from ASUS or try VIAarena to see if they that have an even newer version.

http://support.asus.com/download/do...

http://www.viaarena.com/default.asp...

Bad cable?

I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you peanut.

Your mboard has two drive controllers that support both SATA and IDE. One is Via and is built into the main chipset - if you have the Via main chipset drivers loaded, the drivers for it are already installed. The other one is Promise, and it requires you load the drivers for the Promise controller.
If you have XP Pro installed, you install the 32bit drivers, not the 64 bit ones, which are meant for a 64 bit op system such as Windows Server 2003.
The 32 bit Promise drivers are farther down the Driver downloads list on the Asus web site.
Two SATA headers on the mboard are for the VIA IDE/SATA controller, two are for the Promise IDE/SATA controller and the SATA headers/sockets for it are labelled RAID.
Which SATA mboard header/socket do you have the drive connected to? If you don't have it connected to one labelled RAID for the Promise controller, you DO NOT need to load Promise drivers at all.
......

It is extremely unlikely both SATA drives would be defective. In fact, I suspect neither is defective

XP can sometimes have problems finding a hard drive, but your mboard bios should detect the drive no problem.
If your bios detects the drive, you should be able to confirm that in the mboard bios Setup pages, and you should see it's model number on the first black screen as you boot the computer (if it isn' obscured by the Asus logo screen).

If the bios doesn't see the drive at all, or doesn't see it sometimes......
It's a lot more likely your problem is because of a defective SATA data cable, or, more likely, one that isn't latching onto it's header/socket on the mboard, or into the socket on the hard drive, properly.
The end of the SATA data cable is supposed to latch onto/into the mboard header or socket, and the socket on the drive - it should not come out easily when you merely brush against the cable. That depends on a tab on one side of the connector on the end of the cable being intact - it is common for that to get damaged or break off. If it doesn't latch, mere vibration can cause the cable to come out enough such that you get a poor or no data cable connection. If it won't latch tape the end in place or use another or a new SATA data cable that does latch in place.

The same applies to the SATA power cable, but usually problems are because of the data cable.

Another thing to check is to make sure the data or power cable is plugged in such that the cable end is not at an angle.

If you're sure the SATA data cable is okay and the drive is still not detected every time you boot, most bioses have a setting where you can specify a delay detecting hard drives that is set to zero seconds or is disabled by default, and you can enable that if it's disabled and/or set that to a delay of x seconds - usually that's enough for the bios to detect the problem drive every time you boot.

RAID requires at least two hard drives be connected to the RAID controller - you can't set up a RAID array on only one drive. All RAID controllers can be used in non-RAID mode, so setting up a RAID array is not required, and if only one drive is connected to the RAID controller, setting up a RAID array is useless. In this case the Promise controller also supports RAID on the second IDE header, so if you have two drives connected to it, the RAID array can have two SATA drives, or two IDE drives, or an IDE and a SATA drive.

The Promise controller probably does NOT recognize drives that use the ATAPI standard which all optical drives use, so it probably will not recognize IDE or SATA optical drives.

I had NO idea there were SATA connections outside of the red Raid connectors on the board. In fact the 'bad' drive was showing up on the bios.
Now, I did remove the 64bit from the device manager but when it searches for new hardware on startup that is what it finds, again and again.
I will try the black sata connections tonight! Thanks for all the response. I'll post back later!

TubesandWires.....where on earth did you learn all this stuff? Your reply above is interesting and well written. At least I was able to understand it.

srloren

I plugged in the sata cable to the black sata 1 slot and windows will not finish booting. It is stuck on the startup window. What could this mean??
thanks

srloren

"TubesandWires.....where on earth did you learn all this stuff?"

From looking at the manual for the mboard model, and accumulated findings for many mboards, and a little personal experience. My nephew had a SATA data cable that wouldn't latch at the drive end and would come out of it's socket on it's own. I had one Gigabyte mboard that would not reliably detect one hard drive while booting unless I enabled a 5 second or so delay detecting it in the bios Setup. Lots of mboards that have Promise drive controllers, and many PCI drive controller cards with Promise chipsets, cannot recognize optical drives connected to that controller.

"I plugged in the sata cable to the black sata 1 slot and windows will not finish booting. It is stuck on the startup window."

What do you mean by the startup window?
.....

I'm assuming your Windows installation has at least SP1 updates built in, or has been upgraded to include SP2 updates - it must in order to recognize SATA hard drives.
.....

I'm assumimg your SATA drive was previously detected by your bios when it was connected to the RAID SATA connector, and was visible in Windows.
....

The SATA drive must be detected by the mboard bios.
If it isn't......
- Did you check your SATA data cable? Is it okay? Does it "latch" on both ends?
Replace it if in doubt.
- if that's okay, see "SATA-2" at the end of this post

....

The SATA 1 header/socket is the one closest to the second IDE header. Usually you are best off connecting to SATA headers in the order they are numbered.
.....

Look in your bios Setup pages.

Advanced - Onboard Devices

SATA Boot Rom - Enabled

Boot - Boot Device Priority

The ideal way to set this for most people is floppy drive first, a CD or DVD drive second, a hard drive third.
(In all bioses I have encountered, if a floppy drive is listed after a CD or DVD drive in this boot order, you cannot boot from a bootable floppy. However, there are apparently a few mboard bioses where that doesn't matter.)
For the CD or DVD drive, if you have more than one, you may be able to choose which one (model) to boot a bootable CD from.
Some bioses will boot a bootable CD or DVD from any CD or DVD drive listed, trying them in the order they are listed, but in some you must specify which one.

For the hard drive, if you have more than one, you should be be able to choose which one (model) to boot from.

Many more recent bioses will default to listing a SATA hard drive first in this boot order if both an IDE hard drive and a SATA hard drive are detected.
In many bioses, if the first hard drive listed is not bootable, the bios will not try the other hard drives listed in the order they are listed until it finds the first bootable one - you usually get a message bootable drive not found, or similar, or sometimes the mboard just halts booting at that point.
In that case, if the first hard drive listed is not bootable, you must change that to one that is. In your case, if Windows is on an IDE hard drive, that drive model must be listed first
.................................

SATA-2

Your mboard SATA specs say it supports SATA at up to 150mb/sec data burst speeds.
There is newer spec called SATA-2 that supports up to 300mb/sec data burst speeds.

If your hard drive is SATA-2 (all recent ones are), some mboard chipsets that have only the older SATA recognition support will recognize the SATA-2 drive fine but treat it as a SATA drive.
HOWEVER, some chipsets that have only the older SATA recognition support will NOT recognize the SATA-2 drive at all.

To get around this problem, some SATA-2 hard drive brands/models (e.g. some Seagate, Samsung ones) have pins on the hard drive on which you can install a jumper to force the drive into the older SATA mode (150mb/sec max) standard, and when the jumper is installed, the bios will see the SATA-2 hard drive fine, as a SATA drive.
However some SATA-2 drives do not have such an option (e.g. some Maxtor models). The only way you can use them in that case on a mboard that doesn't recognize them is to get a PCI SATA controller card that suppports recognizing SATA-2 drives and connect the SATA-2 drive to that, or, probably, by using a SATA to IDE interface adapter that suppports recognizing SATA-2 drives that converts the SATA drive to IDE connection usability.

I have the jumper pin set to 150 on the drive as that is what my motherboard specs to. The cable is connected and locked in at both places.
The motherboard and windows did recognize the drive before but only for about a month before it failed and never recognized it again.
I'm not sure if the bios is recognizing the drive or not anymore. I have the IDE set to priority boot and there is no option for the sata drive there. I do not have a floppy installed and only 1 dvd/cd drive that is set to 2nd on the list. The third option is Yukon PXE.
I cannot find any place where it gives me the option to delay hard drive detection.
thanks.

Okay, the bios is detecting the hard drive but when I tab into the user window it says it a 257 gig drive. it actually is an 80gig.
when windows first begins to load there is a logo screen and a scrolling load bar in the center. That is where it is stuck.
The bar continues to scroll as if it is loading but I've let it go for about 20 minutes without a change.

"I'm not sure if the bios is recognizing the drive or not anymore."

If your bios detects the drive, you should be able to confirm that in the mboard bios Setup pages, and you should see it's model number on the first black screen as you boot the computer (if it isn' obscured by the Asus logo screen).

You may or may not need to use the jumper that limits the SATA-2 drive to SATA mode - the drive may be detected even if you don't install it - but in any case it will run in SATA mode on this mboard when connected ditrectly to the mboard headers.

You said you tried a second SATA drive previously. Which one do you have connected now? Does the second one have more capacity?
Do you have any drive connected with more capacity?
(For the bios/Windows to detect it as 257gb binary size it would be about 300gb manufacturer's decimal size)

If you haven't tried the second SATA one, try it.

If you have another SATA data cable, try it.

Lots of things can cause Windows to fail to fully load at the point you describe.
What happens when you disconnect the SATA drive's data cable?
(Always remove the AC power to your case/PS whenever you change any connection inside the case)
If it still fails to load Windows, something else is wrong.

I'm an idiot!

I have had this computer overclocked for a long time. I up'd it a little recently. Must be when the sata connection is in it is to much. I returned the setting to a standard clock and it booted up and works fine! I should have known. Thanks for all your help!

I'm glad to hear your problem has been solved.
At least you admitted your mistake -sometimes we don't hear anything more when someone finds they did that.

Thank you. I don't know that I would have ever figured it out without posting. Originally I had the sata data cable backwards, using the promise instead of the via and the wrong setting in the bios disabled. When you walked me through all those 'fixes' the overclock became more obvious. Thanks again!