Help getting new K8VSE DAW to find the SATA drives

[tommydee]

Hey,
Building an Allen Stein machine.
Relatively new to PCs, so it's probably an insane thing to do, but I'm having fun... despite the frustrations.

So here's my prob. I've finally got it all assembled. I power it on, it scans for IDE drives, but I have SATA drives on the SATA connectors on this board, and it can't find them.

I have one SATA drive plugged into the SATA 1 connector, the other plugged into the SATA 2 connector... any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Tom.

[JamesV]

First take a look at this thread. More detail on how to load proper SATA driver during the XP installation can also be found at K8V sticky post. Hope this helps.

[tommydee]

Thanks a tonne, 'cause this helps a tonne.

My brain is too dead to sort this issue out tonight, but I think what this is telling me is: I should disconnect the drives from the Via connectors, plug 'em into the Promise connectors, change the Promise in the BIOS from RAID to IDE, and save some drivers to a floppy... and this is where I get totally lost.

Further, I don't have a floppy drive -- I don't remember one being on the Allen Stein list of gear? I haven't even seen a 3.5 disk in about 2 years! Bizarre that I should need one now.

Any further tips/elucidation/ways around avoiding having to buy a floppy drive would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Tom.

[JamesV]

I use Promise, many are using the VIA controller. Performance difference I believe so far has been negligible. If you use Promise, you must change controller to IDE mode in BIOS and load SATA 378 driver after you press F6 during the intial XP installation. Otherwise VIA uses same SATA V220E driver in both modes, however not clear how to disable raid. If you do plan to overclock, that second link to K8V forum strongly cautions using the VIA controller has resulted in loss of drive. Hope this helps.

[tommydee]

If you use Promise, you must ... load SATA 378 driver after you press F6 during the intial XP installation.

to do this, however, i need a floppy drive, right?

my next question (remember I'm a PC newbie, so sorry for probably obvious questions) is: how do I get the SATA 378 drivers on the floppy?

I'm assuming I power-on with the ASUS CD in the CD drive, open it up (somehow), find the right driver folder, choose the makedisk.exe option, and then stick a floppy in the floppy drive (which I am yet to buy). Is this right?

Is there anyway to do this without having to get a floppy drive (which I'm assuming I'll never use again... or do PCs need such floppies from time to time?)

cheers, and thanks again for the help -- it's very much appreciated.

Tom.

[tommydee]

bump. (sorry... just really want to know if there's a way around this problem without having to buy a floppy drive and disk...)