SATA HD not recognized by XP

how do you have your boot order? XP doesn't see your SATA drives as IDE drives rather it sees em as SCSI. Change your boot sequence to boot SCSI. When you do a clean install of XP it will ask if you have mass storage drivers to install press F6 press F6 and install the Promise SATA 376 controller drivers for XP and the Promise SATA drivers for XP from the floppy disk that came with your mainboard package.

I beg your pardon but the Promise SATA controller is NOT SEEN by XP as IDE controller. you have 2 IDE controllers on your mainboad and SATA controllers. They are NOT the same. The promise SATA controller is a SCSI type of controller and hense needs to be in the boot sequence of the BIOS. If you tried enabling boot SCSI in the BIOS you would be able to boot. I'm running a MSI K7N2GL mainboard with Promise 378 SATA and have to have boot SCSI enabled in the boot sequence or the computer won't boot. If looks for an IDE drive on an IDE controller and can't find any as they don't exist.

CGit,

The reason why I say it IS a driver issue is because my BIOS does detect the presence of a HD whether its on the Sata RAID connector or just the plain Sata connector. I have tried to setup an array . What I mean before is that there is a option in the BIOS that sets the onboard controller (Promise 378) to act as 1 of 2 modes (Raid or IDE Controller). When booting off of a XP CD and doing a fresh install for the 1st time, none of the 12 drivers I have loaded to a floppy help windows xp find my HD. I will try your idea of enable the SCSI boot sequence, but after all of the articles I have read on WDC.com, Promise.com and asus.com as well as techsupportforum.com none of the help articles list anything about using the SCSI boot sequence. I do appreciate your help.

I am going to try it tonight. Thanks again CT

well when you do the install and XP asks you if you have SCSI third party mass storage device drivers to press F6 [I think it's F6 haven't done an install lately] you press F6 and when Windows prompts you to install from a floppy, install BOTH XP drivers [there are 2 in the floppy.scroll to find the second driver]. Windows will then continue to install the all the necessary files and reboot. you should then boot up and windows will continue to load. [note this assumes that you created an array of your SATA drives connected to the SATA controllers and the SATA RAID controller is enabled in the BIOS. Some bios allow you to disable the promise fastrack RAID controller if your not using it so that it bypasses the setup utilitiy.].

the above procedure is what I had to use on my MSI K7N2GL-ISLR mainboard with the Promise SATA onboard controller. Worked for me.