PLEASE someone help me!!! I'm loosing my temper with my PC and it's probably my fualt (like it could be the computers....doh!) I've bought and fitted a SATA HDD and plugged it into channel 0 and connected the power. I have an IDE HDD already installed and working. I boot up with the OS loaded on the IDE. I get to device manager and find that there is an exclamtion icon next to 'via serial ATA drive controller'. I have installed and reinstalled the driver every way possible - through MB CD autorun and manually using the hardware wizard. My SATA drive isn't available. I can't see the SATA drive in My Computer and i can't see it in Disk Manager. When i boot the PC the pre-check says that no SATA device was found on channel 0 or 1, yet it's showing it in Windows as detected but not working - i don't get it. PLEASE somebody, throw me a bone before i throw the b#!%*$d computer!!! All advice welcome (while i go and count to 10) thanks. H.I.T

OK - sorry for this question - SATA is enabled in the BIOS isn't it? 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

Some suggest that the driver for Windows 2000 and/or XP be installed before connecting the drive. ????? 98% of the population is asleep. The other 2% are staring around in complete amazement, abject terror, or both.

Hi, What board do you have? Some boards have a jumper to enable SATA. I would look through the manual to make sure all procedures are followed regarding SATA and make sure that it's recognized and enabled in BIOS before I'd worry about it being recognized by the OS. Do you have the drive formatted yet? Tony AMD Athlonxp 3200+ OC Asus A7N8x-deluxe-E ATI AIW 9600pro 2x WD SATA raptors/raid0 Corsair XMS3200 16x Lite-on DVD 12x DVD-R 48x Lite-on CDRW Aspire Super Alien Case

Hi all I'm a bit calmer today - sorry about that! Anyway, yes Zenith i have checked the BIOS to make sure it's enabled and i have even tried updating/flashing the BIOS which caused all sorts of problems and wouldn't even let me on the net (cause i didn't have enough resouces to go round!) Luckily i'd backed up the origonal and reinstalled that, and all is now back to normal. Didn't help the SATA situation though. I have installed the MB SATA drivers that came with the board. Tony Seiler - i haven't yet checked for a jumper on the board - will do that shortly. The board is a Gigabyte board with a VIA K8M800 chipset on it (GA-K8VM800M). Please keep the suggestions coming; i'm loosing hair by the second, not to mention sleep. Sad isn't it! Might be worth mentioning that the SATA drive is a Western Digital SATA 2 250 GB drive (7200rpm, 16MB cache). Could it be a compatibilty problem?? H.I.T

Im having the exact same problem with the same drive and motherboard, worse, the WD 250gb drive immediately breaks without any warning as soon as i connect it to this motherboard and turn it on. Ive sent the drive back twice now and now Im afraid to connect any drive again. What is going on with this? Its horrible that it breaks the drive as soon as I try to turn it on.

Joe It's basically a driver issue it seems. If you make sure the chipset you have can handle 300mb transfer rate to start with (if not, alter the jumper on the back of the drive to limit it to 150mb which the chipset should be able to handle). Once this is sorted you need to make sure the raid/sata drivers are installed - you'll probably have to find then on the net and put them on a floppy. Boot the computer using the XP CD and press F6 when asked. You can install the drivers from here as the XP install doesn't have them. When you have done that you can install the operating system and then boot from it. Make sure you don't install the raid/sata drivers from your m/board disc when installing m/board drivers as this will replace the ones you've just installed and stop you from booting again - trust me i did it!! I'm still having problems because i did exactly what i have just advised but then booted from another XP install located on the IDE drive - that messes things up cause the sata install isn't detected again after that. That might be something to do with then raid/sata drivers being installed on the ide drive (from the m/board drivers!). Confused?? Me to!! Let me know how you get on. H.I.T