Installing a Sata drive ...

Hey guys

I was asked at work to put a harddrive into another machine, I thought this was all routine until I opened up box A which is a Pentium2 and found a Sata drive in it! It had an expansion card for the sata drive.

Now Box B [Intel D815EFV-D815EPFV] where the sata HDD must go doesnt seem to boot up. I put in the same expansion card from A into box B and plugged all in the same.

I am not too familar with sata drives so forgive me if I sound abit noobish :)

Now when I turn on the PC I get a "BIOS is not installed" even though I can go into BIOS.

Eventually I get a "Drive not found - System Halted" message and that is as far as it gets.

Now how does it work with the expansion card - how do I install it in order for the sata drive to work. Or must I configure it some other way.

Thank you.

"BIOS is not installed" is probably a message from the controller card. I suspect it's one that allows you to boot from an SATA drive when the mainboard's bios doesn't have support for it.

If the mainboard of B has a SATA controller onboard connect the drive to that.

On box A:

Was the drive actually working in this box? I'd be impressed if a box that old had a bios up to date enough to recognize that drive.

On box B:

Again I suspect maybe the bios needs to be updated to recognize it?

do you HAVE to use the old SATA HDD ?
image it to a network share
and drop in an IDE HDD in its place

gotta be easier / quicker / CHEAPER :eek: :p :)

Hi Cider,

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until I opened up box A which is a Pentium2 and found a Sata drive in it! It had an expansion card for the sata drive.

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Might I respectfully suggest that you have actually found SCSI rather than SATA?

;)

That can happen to drives when you change controllers Disk Management in this case is your friend :-)

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If the mainboard of B has a SATA controller onboard connect the drive to that.

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Neither mobo have slots, that is why there is an expansion card.

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On box A:Was the drive actually working in this box? I'd be impressed if a box that old had a bios up to date enough to recognize that drive.

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Yes it was working.

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foxyloxley:do you HAVE to use the old SATA HDD ?image it to a network share and drop in an IDE HDD in its place

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Well yes unless I order another one which im sure management wont be too impressed.

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Might I respectfully suggest that you have actually found SCSI rather than SATA?

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Im sure its a sata drive, Nihil you putting doubt in my mind! I have found the user manual and driver for the expansion card. "Press F6 to install Scsi or Raid drivers!"

Well im going to try load the drivers for this card but im sure I will have to update BIOS.

Can someone tell me why someone would put a sata drive in a Pentium 2 or is this normally the case?

I just looked at the manual of that Intel board.. I assumed it was a new board but it's rather old (P3)..

You may want to try setting "Scan user flash Area" to enabled in the boot menu of the BIOS. I'm guessing this will enable the BIOS on the controller card. Once that's working you should be able to detect the attached drive and boot from it.

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Originally Posted by Cider

Can someone tell me why someone would put a sata drive in a Pentium 2 or is this normally the case?

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I can guess why... Smallest IDE disks still available are 40GB or more. The old P2 probably can't handle that. Sticking a controller and a drive in there can breath new life in an old machine.

You may want to rethink your strategy. I replaced my old server board with an upgrade set, mainboard+processor+memory for about EUR160,-. That's for a Core 2 dual with 1GB memory.

I see - thank you Sirdice - I will do that later today. :)

Thank yo for all the quick responses and replies.