Reason 5: The Serial ATA motherboard drivers are not properly loaded (especially in Windows XP/2000)
When you install Windows XP/2000 on a drive that will be the boot drive (ie, the C: drive), when it comes time to install Windows, the drive may not be detected. Here is the proper procedure:
- Insert the Windows XP/2000 CD/DVD into the CD/DVD drive.
- Power down the computer.
- Mount and connect the Serial ATA hard drive.
- See here for an interactive flash tutorial illustrating this.
- Power up the computer.
- For some add-in SATA controller cards, you will need to press the F6 key to install drivers as the Windows setup screen launches.-You may never have noticed the “F6” option before, since it happens at the bottom of the screen and is visible for only a few seconds during a standard install. What you most likely encountered during the setup process was a screen which came up informing you Setup could not find any drives installed on your computer, and it could not continue, much like the screen sample below:
- To be able to hit the F6 button, you must restart the Setup process, and watch the bottom of the screen after pressing Enter on the “Welcome to Setup” screen. There will be some moments of files being loaded, and then you should see a message appear which says “Press F6 if you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver”. This message will only stay on the screen for a couple of seconds, so press F6 as soon as you see it appear.
- After this is done, you will see other messages appear, and it will act as though nothing is happening, but eventually a screen will appear which will allow you to install the drivers for the add-in SATA controller. The screen will look like the sample below:
- After you press S, the driver install process will continue and the floppy diskettes will be needed. Further instructions will be furnished after the driver install process has ended.
- Insert the floppy diskette containing the drivers for the add-in Serial ATA controller.
- Once the drivers are loaded, proceed with the normal Windows XP/2000 installation.
A few further notes on the driver diskette:
For the hard drive to be detected in a new installation, the drivers for the add-in SATA controller/motherboard must be loaded at the beginning of installation.
The drivers for the controller/motherboard can probably be found either on the CD that came with it or on the manufacturer’s website. These drivers do not come from Seagate; they come from the motherboard manufacturer. Simply load the required drivers on the diskette and have it ready.
