I have visited ASUS forum and Downloads for this board. Nowhere can I find drivers for this Seagate SATA/300 hard drive. The Processer to IO controller is an Intel 82865G/PE/P/GV/82448P (2570) and a search on Intel's site shows only an 820 family, but none of the numbers match mine. I read that as long as you have SP1 or greater that Windows will recognize the drive. When I install from the Windows XP CD it recognizes the drive but only 131 gb or storage. I installed the drive while Windows was still on the computer and went to Disk Management and partitioned the drive there, but when I removed the drive with windows on it, C: drive and only hocked up the 2 sata drives it showed one drive as format unknown and the other as a dynamic drive. That is the drive that I used Disk Manager on. What should I do at this point? I regret purchasing SATA. IDE were so easy to install. TIA for any help. srloren

Did you move the jumper if any to SATA/150?Hardware compatibility issues may also be a reason for this SATA drive ruining your patience.A smaller size 100 GB SATA/150 only would probably be O.K.Those IDE drives are said to be obsolete but they are a lot simpler to configure as a second or third drive data drive.

To add to what Petit Jean said, if your SATA drive is SATA-2, if the mboard supports only SATA (SATA 1), some SATA mboard chipsets will still see a SATA-2 drive but only as a SATA drive and run it at 150mb/sec max burst speeds, but some chipsets will not recognize a SATA-2 at all unless you can install a jumper on pins on the drive to force it into SATA mode - some SATA-2 hard drives have that capability (e.g. some Samsung) some do not (e.g. some Maxtor). You DO NOT necessary have to load RAID or SATA drivers unless you want the drive to be in those modes. If you load RAID drivers you do not necessarily have to setup RAID. Your bios Setup on the mboard has three SATA drive modes - ATA or IDE compatible, AHCI or SATA, and RAID. You do not need any special drivers for ATA or IDE compatible mode - they are already built into XP. The SATA drive will run in that mode at up to 133mb/sec burst speeds, which isn't that much lower than 150mb/sec SATA (SATA 1) mode. Mboard manufacturers often do not have the main chipset drivers on their web site - you often have to go to the main chipset manufacturer's web site. However, they are on the CD that came with the mboard, and a floppy with SATA/RAID drivers may have also come with the mboard as well as the SATA/RAID drivers are probably on the CD. You have the Intel 865PE chipset. You ignore the 82 at the beginning of the chipset model number. Go here: http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scr... Read the Readme's and Release notes! #1 - RAID/AHCI drivers (AHCI mode a.k.a. SATA mode) #2 - Main chipset drivers - INF Update utility #4 - Integrated Graphics drivers #5 - Raid software - Intel Application Accelerator If you need the floppy files to load SATA or RAID drivers when you press F6 during Setup see page 2, #22

Thank you both for your help. There are no jumpers other than those for Manufactorer only. The install instructions state not to jumper them. I went to the Intel web site, but armed with your new info I will go again. You have been thorough with your replys and I appreciate it very much. Thanks guys... srloren

"it recognizes the drive but only 131 gb" Your mboard and chipset are recent enough they should support recognizing any size of hard drive. What size is recognized in the bios Setup? (the setting in the bios Setup should be Auto by the method Auto or LBA). "it showed one drive as format unknown and the other as a dynamic drive. That is the drive that I used Disk Manager on." You probably DO NOT need to use the Ontrack brand Disk Manager utility to install a dynamic overlay! And that utility may change bios settings to a specific hard drive size.(if it did, change it to Auto by the method Auto or LBA). The Ontrack brand Disk Manager version must be new enough to recognize a greater than 137gb (=128gb in Windows) drive without using a dynamic overlay. The XP Setup must recognize all partitions. The one that is unrecognized is probably a hidden partition - XP can't deal with those. You need to unhide it with whatever you hid it with (Ontrack brand Disk Manager?) if XP can't delete the existing partition. If you are using an XP CD that does not have at least SP1 updates included, it cannot recognize a drive larger than 137gb manufacturer's size (= 128gb in Windows) and the partitiioning and formattinng of the drive take up some drive space that can't used for data. You must use an XP CD with at least SP1 updates included, or you can make a CD-R that has the contents of your XP CD and the contents of the SP2 updates slipstreamed into it. Slipstreamed Windows XP CD Using SP2 http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstr...

Tubesandwires, I appologize for not making it clear when I said Disk Manager, I should have written Disk Management, the program in the Computer Management section of Windows Services within Control Panel. I finally got everything installed...that is to a point. I still have files that need to be copied to the one SATA drive I have installed, so I put my old Boot C: and D: drives back in to copy those files. I also was able to create a boot drive by installing XP Pro SP2 on the other SATA Drive. So I plan to remove the ide Boot and D drives and only have the 2 sata drives installed, giving me the storage that I will need in the future. One question I have. Since there are no jumpers for slave and master on SATA drives, does it matter which connection on the motherboard I use for the boot drive? There are only 2 sata connections on the P5P800. Also is there any reason why I could not leave one of the IDEs in for additional storage. They are 120 Gig Maxtors. The SATAs are Seagate SATA/300 running at 150 on my older motherboard. Thanks for your help gentlemen. srloren

So it sounds like your mboard chipset has no problem seeing the SATA-2 drives, if that's what they are, as SATA drives and is running them at SATA 150mb/sec max burst speed specs, and I assume they are now seen as their proper full size. You didn't say whther the SATA drives are in ATA/IDE compatible, or AHCI/SATA , or RAID mode in the bios Setup, or whether you installed SATA or RAID drivers when installing Windows on the one SATA drive. "One question I have. Since there are no jumpers for slave and master on SATA drives, does it matter which connection on the motherboard I use for the boot drive? There are only 2 sata connections on the P5P800." I was not able to get onto the Asus site when I tried - "server too busy" - so I haven't actually looked at the manual for your mboard. I found what chipset it uses simply by searching for: P5P800 and looking at the info at the "hits". I have never seen any hard drive, IDE or SATA, that does not have master/slave/cs (cable select) jumpering available - mind you, one of those may not require a actual jumper to be installed (sometimes master, sometimes slave). Theoretically a SATA drive could be set to CS and not be changable, and whether it is master or slave determined by which SATA header is is connected to, but I haven't seen or heard of that situation. Take a look at the label on the SATA drive(s), or look up the jumper settings for that model on the manufacturer's web site. Take a look in the mboard manual to see if a drive connected a certain SATA header has to be jumpered to master or slave or cs, and/or whether it has to be connected to a particular SATA header to be master or slave. The default thing would be whatever SATA drive you want to boot with be seen as master, whether that's by master jumpering, or by master or cs jumpering or unchangable cs setting connected to a particular SATA header.In most bioses on newer mboards you could also boot a drive seen as slave, but sometimes in some situations Windows will give you problems if you do that, especially if it's the only SATA drive. "I also was able to create a boot drive by installing XP Pro SP2 on the other SATA Drive." If the IDE drive(s) with Windows on it (them) were not connected when you setup Windows on the SATA drive, the logical drive letter assignments will be as you expect - C is the Windows partition on the SATA drive. However, if the IDE drive(s) with Windows on it (them) WERE connected when you setup Windows on the SATA drive, the logical drive letter assignments WILL NOT be as you expect - C will still be assigned to the Windows partition that already had Windows on it previously on the IDE drive(s), and the SATA drive Windows partition will be assigned some other logical drive letter. You can see that for yourself - when you boot Windows from the SATA drive, Start - Run - type: msinfo32 (press Enter) - look at the right side of the System Information screen and see what it says beside Windows Directory. Is it C:\Windows, or it is it at some other logical drive letter? You can't change the logical drive letter assigned to the current Windows you boot from, so if the IDE drives were still connected when you setup Windows on the SATA drive, if you want the Windows partition on the SATA drive to be C, you must run Setup again on the SATA drive with any IDE drive that has Windows installed on it disconnected. .... XP assigns logical drive letters in the order in which drives or partitions are found by it, and often will not change even if you remove a drive or reduce the number of partitions, but you may find you want to change which drive letters are assigned to what. If you need to change the logical drive letter assigned to any partition or optical drive other than the one Windows is currently booting from, or one assigned to a CD or DVD drive, that is easily done in Disk Management, but you can only change to drive letters not currently assigned, so sometimes you need to temporarily assign a different drive letter than you want so that the drive letter(s) you want to assign are available, then change the drive letter(s) assigned again to the ones you want to use for a partition or CD or DVD drive. "Also is there any reason why I could not leave one of the IDEs in for additional storage." You can have as many IDE or SATA drives as you like connected. You just specify in your bios Setup settings in the boot order settings and related which drive you want to boot with. If you like, you can still boot another partition on a drive or drives that have a Windows installation on them - the procedure to do that is quite simple - and you will be given a choice each time you boot which one to boot with, and/or it will default to loading one of them after x seconds unless you select (one of) the other one(s.) However, each Windows installation should have a different Product Key, or you will probably have problems when you do things such as attempt to get Microsoft updates. It is NOT wise to install one with the same Product Key on the same computer, such as for the same legitimate Windows CD.