hi there guys im have some problems with the bios detecting my sata western digital 250 gig harddrive, the onboard raid detects the Hdd but the bios will not see it at all. when i start up the windows xp installation it dosent detect the hdd either. So what can i do to make the bios detect my sata drive??? this is the gear im using Asus A7N8X deluxe Western Digital 250 Gig SATA 1 gig of DualChannel ram AMD 3200 thanks guys

That board has a SATA bios which you see during POST - press Ctrl+S to access settings (not sure if that's what you mean by onboard RAID - I have this board too, with a single SATA drive, not RAID array). It won't appear on the IDE drive list. If you want to install XP on the drive, you'll need to copy the SATA drivers to a floppy disk (they're on the mobo driver CD - or you can get them from Asus website). When XP install starts it says press F6 if you need to supply SCSI drivers etc. So press F6 then, and later in the process you will be prompted to supply drivers - by loading the floppy you've prepared. XP should now install - but one further thing - you should set the bios to boot from SCSI (for the install process, should be CDROM, then SCSI).

ok il do that thanks very much for your advice on this matter :) i cant find the link for the sata drivers on the asus site can you give me a direct link if thats ok thanks again

Pop in your mobo's CD on a working computer. Search the CD for a file called MAKEDISK.exe. That is the executable for making the floppy with the raid/ide drivers you will need. Double click it and put in a floppy and follow the instructions. When installing the OS, look for the prompt to hit F6 to install third party drivers. Hit F6 repeatedly until it begins to load files. Then it will ask you to install a floppy with the drivers and hit enter when ready. It will then (likely) list about three different drivers for your mobo, choose the XP driver and hit enter. Follow the onscreen prompts to continue with the installation. It has NOTHING to do with BIOS recognizing your sata(s). It has to do with XP not recognizing the mobo's configurations (drivers). ASUS P5GD1 P-4 3.4 SOCKET 775 OCed to 3.9 1G Corsaire PC400 ATI RX700XL 256MB PCI-E

yes but i dont have the motherboard cd......and i cant find anything on the asus site for making a sata driver disk, Can someone copy it for me and email it to vomitthyprophecy@yahoo.co.uk or do you know here a i can find this file on the asus site?

http://www.asus.com/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A7N8X%20Deluxe&Type=All You'rs interested in the silicon_v10022.zip file. Unzip it after download and click the icon for makedisk. ASUS P5GD1 P-4 3.4 SOCKET 775 OCed to 3.9 1G Corsaire PC400 ATI RX700XL 256MB PCI-E