Thread: Help! new w7 install on new hd

Originally Posted by jx2mad

I have 2 sata ports and have tried both with separate cables to no avail. It would be good to see what the bios should be set to. Jim

with sata you dont really set the bios. its all plug and plug in my experience.
i would be putting to hdd into another computer to see if the hdd is faulty

The computer had a sata series 1 installed by me after the old drive stopped. This was 3-4 years ago and it worked fine. I remember buying the hdd and sata cable and plugging it in and installing the operating system onto it without problems. The tech tried to fit a new 1tb sata drive and said it was a series 3 sata drive and my bios was too old to recognise it. I went to my computer shop and bought a 500m sata drive last week. I explained the problem and the shop tech said I should not have a problem installing it as it would be accepted by older machines. And that is where I am stuck. It seems my mother board which is an Athlon AMD 64 can't see the new HDD

Originally Posted by Eevo

with sata you dont really set the bios. its all plug and plug in my experience.
i would be putting to hdd into another computer to see if the hdd is faulty

Some boards had the option to set the SATA ports as a RAID configuration, in which case a driver was needed, particularly if it's not a recent board. In most cases, any OS after XP had the drivers built in, but not all cases.

Originally Posted by sheerluck

Some boards had the option to set the SATA ports as a RAID configuration, in which case a driver was needed, particularly if it's not a recent board. In most cases, any OS after XP had the drivers built in, but not all cases.

yes but the OP isnt talking about RAID array setup.

Originally Posted by Eevo

yes but the OP isnt talking about RAID array setup.

Yes, but if the SATA function had accidentally been set to RAID, then that could be a reason.

Originally Posted by sheerluck

Yes, but if the SATA function had accidentally been set to RAID, then that could be a reason.

the OP said he didnt know the bios so i dont think he had changed it, but it is a possibility.

If it's an old PC then there may be no drivers for the MB chipset on the install disk and the generic ones mightn't work on it either. That would mean no USB and no network so it makes it hard to get the drivers from anywhere. I've had that happen before.

Originally Posted by Eevo

the OP said he didnt know the bios so i dont think he had changed it, but it is a possibility.

And said he'd had a tech there, presumably much more likely to delve into the BIOS.

There was a generation of boards that if you tried to use the RAID function it would only load the relevant driver from a floppy. That was back in the XP days, but if the machine is of that era, it's possible that W7 has the same issue.

It's really all conjecture without sitting there in front of the machine, knowing the components, and having a test rig.