DescentBB

Well for you guys it'll probably be a simple question.

A friend of the family (female, divorcee, clueless about gadgets even more than Flabby) asked somone to upgrade her computor. He brought round a new motherboard, screen card and RAM keeping the old 40gig HD and everything else then buggered off. I put everything in, boot up and get a "SATA not detected on primary and secondary" error.

I scoured the net and saw this was quite an issue for plebs like me, but didn't find anything that talked english (or hebrew).

If anyone can give me any pointers as to what is SATA is and why and wherefore i'd much appreciate it.

SATA is Serial ATA which is the new standard in Hard drive connections. You're old drive is a standard PATA (Parallel ATA) so you need not worry about that message. YOu can probably go into the BIOS and do some snooping and turn off SATA since you are not using it now. If you buy a new HD soon, thjey will ask you if you want ATA or SATA. It's your choice on that.

It's the motherboard that's new though (asus p5s800_vm) the hard drive is the same. On the old m/b there was no sata "sockets" to worry about.

The new motherboard is likely set in BIOS to boot from a SATA drive. It searches for a SATA drive, finds no SATA drive and quits to the error. You need to alter the boot sequence (and probably tell the BIOS no SATA drives are in the system). Consult the motherboard manual (good luck there since they're all written in Engrish) to determine how to redirect the BIOS to the correct boot device.

Offhand, I would locate the area for the SATA controller in the BIOS and turn that off. Then I would locate the BIOS area where it outlines the Boot Device Sequence and make sure it's set to IDE Hard drive (or closest match). If you're lucky, after turning off the SATA controller it will automatically default to the *old way of doing things* and find the drive with no further effort on your part.

FYI, getting into the BIOS is usually done with either the DELETE key or one of the FUNCTION keys when you hear the system beep after being turned on. Often it will say at the bottom of the screen how to enter the BIOS.

UPON FURTHER REFLECTION... you will probably have difficulty booting because the old hard drive will behave as though it's still connected to the old motherboard and will direct things accordingly. Because the new motherboard will be different, my guess is you won't easily get the system to boot successfully. I would reinstall the OS if I were you and start from scratch. That might entail erasing the drive. If that isn't an acceptible option, I would suggest getting a new boot drive (and doing a fresh OS install) to go with the new motherboard and install the old drive as the secondary D: drive so she'll retain her old data. Maybe even get a SATA drive.

bash wrote:UPON FURTHER REFLECTION... you will probably have difficulty booting because the old hard drive will behave as though it's still connected to the old motherboard and will direct things accordingly. Because the new motherboard will be different, my guess is you won't easily get the system to boot successfully. I would reinstall the OS if I were you and start from scratch. That might entail erasing the drive. If that isn't an acceptible option, I would suggest getting a new boot drive (and doing a fresh OS install) to go with the new motherboard and install the old drive as the secondary D: drive so she'll retain her old data. Maybe even get a SATA drive.

That's exactly what i thought to do (as a last resort) heh! am i dipping my toes in techidom?

Why is there this problem though? Is it a betamax/vhs thing or just progess falling over its feet?

It sorta like if you were suddenly dropped into a party of blokes and birds (look who's getting cockney!) who look very much like your friends and family but aren't. You would try be the same old Flabby telling the same old Flabby jokes but they wouldn't laugh or respond in the ways you're accustomed. They probably wouldn't think the jokes were funny at all. They would consider you strange and would probably ignore you. You would become angry and confused. So, technically, the new motherboard is ignoring the old hard drive because it's trying to be overly familiar without being properly introduced and the old hard drive has become angry and confused.

Note: As you can probably guess, I'm not the sort that should be providing technical advice.

Lol...when i win the lottery that i never play, you're one of the guys that i'm coming to have a beer or two with yer daft bugger.

Meanwhile i'll do this computor sh1t.

If its running XP/2k, don't worry too much. it'll handle the change well enough if you have the driver disks handy.

If its running 9x, install XP.

fliptw wrote:If its running XP/2k, don't worry too much. it'll handle the change well enough if you have the driver disks handy.

this is true only some of the time. If the chipset on the MB is compatable with the old one it might work but don't count on it. If the HAL is differant most likely it won't work.