How to set up my hard drive and optical drives?

jiffypop · Post by **jiffypop** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 7:25 am

I've just built my own PC from scratch for the first time. It has 1 SATA hard drive, 1 DVD-ROM (Pioneer 120-RD) and 1 DVD/RW (PioneerDVR-109). How do I set these up (the cables, jumpers, etc I mean)?

Thanks a lot for your help.

NAiLs · Post by **NAiLs** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 11:43 am

If you leave them on Cable Select, then you don't have to worry. I think they're set like that from the factory... but I could be wrong. It has been a while since I bought a new storage device.

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:48 pm

considering it's SATA, it also depends on what OS you're running (read Windows XP); when you go to install XP you just press F6 to install the SATA driver for your motherboard and continue on. Since you're running 1 drive I would just leave the jumper the way it's set from the factory. Just remember installation of that SATA driver is critical, as your HDD will more than likely not work without it.

jiffypop · Post by **jiffypop** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 8:01 pm

My computer detects the SATA HDD. Does this mean I don't need to install its drivers?

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sat Aug 27, 2005 8:03 pm

Did you already have Windows installed, or is all this fresh? If you haven't installed Windows yet, and if it's XP, then yes you'll have to install your SATA drivers (XP is funny like that, don't know why). You have to press F6 during the beginning of the installation (it'll prompt you to) and pop the driver CD/floppy and get to it

jiffypop · Post by **jiffypop** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 1:42 am

Yes, I am attempting to install WinXP fresh. Where can I get my SATA drivers? I bought it used so it didn't come with any software or documentation.

Also, when I first turn the computer on and it does an IDE scan, it detects both my optical drives, but when I go into the BIOS, they are 'undetected' - only the HDD is detected. What's going on?!

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 10:30 am

The best place to get your drivers is the motherboard's manufacturer's website. Just look up your board, and it should have your drivers, and maybe updated ones at that. As far as the IDE devices are concerned, you may need to initiate the scan in BIOS to check for your drives. Check your BIOS settings first, and if everything looks good, then I would suggest going to your mobo's manufacturer's website (which you'll need to do anyways for all your drivers) and download the firmware update too. Just make sure everything's updated, and if for some reason you keep having the same problem, well then your IDE channels could be bad (though that is pretty improbable, not impossible, just improbable). In that case, you could just get an IDE controller and run your drives on that. Just try all the updates and make sure your settings are good first before looking at hardware.

killswitch83 · Post by **killswitch83** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 10:38 am

btw, to flash your BIOS, you just gotta do this: download the appropriate files for your BIOS (sometimes you gotta open the case and take a look to see what brand and version BIOS you have because some manufacturers use more than one firmware manufacturer on the same board, just different manufacturing dates usually), then download WinFlash here; following the instructions, flash your BIOS and use the new files for update.

JTanczos · Post by **JTanczos** » Sat Oct 22, 2005 2:58 am

I hate how MB manufacturers arnt including floppy drivers to install windows on SATA drives. Come on people! THINK! Asus does that and it annoys me that I have to buy a disk to make a full time drive disk to install windows.

when you hit enter over the "Undetected" lines does it give you an option to scan the channel to find the device?

JT

Heretic · Post by **Heretic** » Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:04 pm

Considering that Windows found your SATA hdd just fine, I'm going to guess that you're running on the nf4 platform (at least that's the only chipset I've heard that doesn't need drivers for a windows installation). At this point, SATA has no benefits other than the smaller cables, each drive having its own channel, and not having to deal with jumpers.

About your BIOS not detecting the IDE drives...that may be because of the cable select, I'm not all too sure as I've never used it before. I always set the jumpers. If you look on the back of the drive (maybe on the top, maybe where the pins are--it depends on the drive) it should tell you the jumper settings. Alternatively, you can probably find it on the manufacturer's site. Just set one drive to master and one to slave.

@JT:
If you really wanted, you could create a windows install disk with all of your drivers slipstreamed. You could also create a standalone install disk that installs Windows for you with all the drivers and patches.

JTanczos · Post by **JTanczos** » Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:56 pm

Never looked into slip streaming. I have a CD book filled with all my driver CDs. *shrugs* works fine enough.

JT

kenc51 · Post by **kenc51** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 1:43 pm

jiffypop wrote:I've just built my own PC from scratch for the first time. It has 1 SATA hard drive, 1 DVD-ROM (Pioneer 120-RD) and 1 DVD/RW (PioneerDVR-109). How do I set these up (the cables, jumpers, etc I mean)?

Thanks a lot for your help.

If both your DVD drives are IDE and your HDD is SATA then just run each DVD drive off a seperate IDE cable/channel... This way you can use both with either "cable select" or "master" --> this will also increase performance.., since only 1 drive can be read @ 1 time if their on the same IDE cable/channel

You only need to use master/slave if your running 2 drives on the same IDE cable!

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How to set up my hard drive and optical drives?

How to set up my hard drive and optical drives?

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