SATA install Driver

[ottosmagic13]

Has anyone successfully installed Win7 on a SATA drive? I have two SATA drives on my silicon image controller. When I run the installer it says that I cannot install to the partition because it's SATA and tells me to manually install the driver.

Well I've tried downloading the driver from the ASUS website and using DriverMAX. Each time I put the driver in a folder on another partition and ran the install. However, when I browse for the driver when prompted it always fails.

Here's the driver I tried: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us ASUS A8N-Deluxe - Vista - 32bit

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Otto

 

[swede1]

I have the same problem on my desktop, i have the Asus p4p800-e Deluxe motherboard and 2 sata drives in raid 0 and i cant get windows 7 or vista to work on that computer, when i get to the point where i need to install the drivers it just whont work, i just get a message that no drivers where found
Seems like Asus dont have drivers that works with vista / 7 for older MB

 

[ottosmagic13]

Can anyone else confirm this?

Is there a way to "slipstream" the drivers onto the 7 DVD? That's how I got around it the SATA issue when I installed XP SP3.

It would be disappointing to find that I have to go through the same hoops to install like I did for XP seeing as it's been 4-5 years and 2 versions (vista + 7) since.

 

[johngalt]

Have you tried putting the SATA drivers on a USB key and seeing if it can pull them off there?

 

[harpocrates23]

I have the same issue but with the Abit av8 3rd Eye mobo. The worst part is that I have the sata drivers and put them on another ide drive, loaded them, and it still will not give me the option to install on to the sata drive.

 

[harpocrates23]

I wanted to apologize for my last post. Just mentioned I also have the problem and no technical details. It has to be the dumbest post I have ever made. So to rectify the error:

Tried to install Windows 7 after downloading the latest beta last night on a machine with the following specs:

Abit AV8 3rd eye guru mobo
74 GB western digital raptor sata drive
Ati hd2600 vga
4 GB ram (2 geil, 2 kingston).

The main details required is the mobo and the hdd info.I downloaded the "latest" sata drivers from abit and stored them on another IDE drive connected, but even when it loads the drivers it will not see any other drives other than the IDE ones for installation. The sata drive is also partitioned for a multi-boot system. A weird thing though is that when I browse to load the drivers again (after the first load) it can see the raptor as drive X and can browse it, but will not give an option to install to it.

I also have several other IDE and Sata connected, but only the IDE will show up for installation.

 

[Soulglow]

I have 2 SATA drives on my dell with oem motherboard, and they work. So it is supported on some computers with no extra effort. I do have one unknown device in my device manager. I suspect it's a RAID controller which I don't need.

 

[harpocrates23]

From what I have read, it is supported on SOME. That's the issue. Windows 7 is meant to reduce the driver compatibility issues Vista had, not introduce more or new ones. XP doesnt have that issue.

Currently managed to install on to a backup barebone pc. An Asus A7VT Terminator. However sound drivers not supported and will not work. tried forcing the drivers from the Asus website., Managed to install soundmax, but of course it qill not work.

Still trying to figure out if this windows 7 will be worth it. Looks like a slightly improved version of Vista and seems will have to wait till it is officially released and of course a SP1 is made for it before an actual main OS install is done.

 

[swede1]

Ok, so, i tried to install windows 7 again on my desktop, and this time i got as far as files started to load, but after all that, i got a error message like this :

Windows could not update the computers boot configuration, installation cannot proceed.

Whats up with that ???

 

[pVix]

I´ve installed windows 7 on an ASUS P5Q with an ICHR9 RAID 0.

But it failed to install on an older motherboard, an ASUS P5L2D. I´ve tried all the available options: Standard IDE, Sata, AHCI, RAID. It simply did not recognize any of the available drivers.

 

[KrullKitty]

Interestingly, my entire system consists of Sata drives, including
my DVD Drives. Everything is Sata driven off the Asus Commando MB.

I recently installed a new 1TB Sata HD in the box and installed Win 7
RC: Build 7100 right off the DVD Rom from a burned ISO DVD Image
and everything went smooth as pie.

 

[lavendje]

SATA Drives

It appears Windows has a problem installing on SATA drives when there is a IDE drive attached. When I installed I had the same problems. With no IDE drives connected and only using SATA drives it works fine. That means no IDE CD, DVD, or HDD. They are two totally different operating devices and automatically look to the IDE drive if it is connected, overlooking the SATA drives that are attached.

 

[rbmorse]

I'm not sure about that...at least it's not universal. I have SATA hard drives, an external USB hard drive (PATA inside its enclosure) and both SATA and PATA optical drives. All work fine under Windows 7 on a Gigabyte EP45 machine.

If your system has a PATA hard drive installed, the BIOS will usually try to boot from that drive when the system is started. That can especially cause problems if the PATA drive is added after the O/S is installed. Recent vintage motherboards may have an option in the BIOS setup that will let you change the boot hard drive (or the order in which the BIOS will check the hard drives for a bootable device), but it may take some experimentation to find the right one. Older motherboards and some laptops may not allow this (check the BIOS setup section of your manual).

If you cannot manually tell the BIOS to boot from a hard drive other than the PATA device you pretty much have to install the operating system to the PATA drive or remove the PATA drive from the system (you can still use the PATA drive it in an external enclosure and attach it via a e-SATA or USB port).

If the problem is that the installer loses track of the SATA hard drive during installation on a mixed system you might be able to work around the issue by disconnecting the PATA drive during the installation process. Make sure the BIOS is configured to boot from the correct device when the installation is complete. Again, this may require some experimentation.

Advanced users can "game" the BIOS by installing just the bootloader to the PATA drive and changing the BCD setup to point to another device, but it's a somewhat involved process and I'm sure there are some good tutorials and how-to's already on this site.

 

[fseal]

Heh I actually had a problem installing W7 x64 on my mahcine with a single SATA drive installed. Gave a bizzare error and would not allow partitioning to occur on the SATA drive.

Turns out I had a flash card reader plugged in with a CF card in it and for some reason that was fubaring the install. The single drive that the installer saw and was trying but failing to partition WAS the SATA drive. But the xistance of the CF card caused it to actually go and try to work on THAT device instead of the SATA device that was shown in the partition manager during install.

I thought at first it was an SSD issue not having installed onto one before but it turns out is's some kind of bug in the installer

I like W7 a LOT but frankly I donlt think it's "fully baked" to use the common MS parlance. I've hand MORE issues installing and configuring W7 on the exact same hardware as I installed Vista on when it was out on MSDN. That's not a warm fuzzy.

I have everything written down, I should post a "Installing W7: One mans quest" article or something. It's a gathering of information that applied to my specific hardware from the 4 corners of the net.

But anyway, yes, try removing EVERY drive, including any USB drives, IDE, Everything and trying again. Maybe plug in the USB to get the driver installed but then remove it before continuing!

 

[whest]

Were you using raid on your previous set up or do you just have 2 sata drives, also your Sata configuration in the bios may need to be altered. Turn raid off in the bios and the drives will show up separetly. Aso you may have AHCL enabled in the bios which has enhanced capabilities, but isnt necessary with the latest sata drives, as they come with it inbuilt, and it also needs the driver installed from a bootable floppy, as below, except instead of raid you would choose AHCL after pressing F6. In the Sata Configuration in the bios choose Sata as IDE rather than Raid or AHCL, and you wont need to install any extra drivers. My board has 2 raid controllers the intel is enabled by default, so I disable the J-Micron controller also –advanced menu – onboard device configuration

To install raid you need the raid driver on a bootable floppy disc, and at the start of installing W7 setup asks have you any SCSI devices, and to press F6 if so, and then you locate the raid controller, and it installs the driver from the floppy drive. When install is complete if its intel you should install the latest intel chipset drivers firstly, reboot, and immediately after that install the intel matrix storage driver - both before you install any other drivers.
The intel chipset drivers are vista still and may need to be installed in compatibilty mode if they wont install normally :

To install a driver OR program in compatibility mode - right click the setup.exe file - click properties - click compatibility - check run in compatibility with vista/xp etc - check run as administrator - leave the rest blank. Start setup.exe and install.

 

[spencerjw]

Has anyone figured out if there is a verifiable real solution for this issue?

I tried a number of different things to get my SATAs to install Win7 Ultimate (final version) and nothing worked. I tried no drives and only a CD and SATA drive, can't find it and won's install drivers.

I've tried 2 SATA drives and CD (gotta have CD for Win7 install of course) and no drives show up.

Finally I had to install an eIDE 30 gig HDD to get Win7 to install to thinking I could then put in the SATA drives (500 GB and 1 TB) and then install Win7 on the 1TB drive from withing the original install on the 30 GB eIDE drive. So far that initial install went great but neither of my SATA drives can be seen from my system.

I tried to get drivers from Abit but seeing as this AV8 mobo is a number of years old I doubt they'll have any drivers for Win7 yet, if ever.

Anything else I can try to do to get these SATA drives seen from Windows? Even in diskmgmt.msc (Disk Management) I don't see them in the top or bottom windows. I know the cabels are good and they are powering up and spinning but nothing can actually see them. Even the WesternDigital Data Lifeguard Tools won't run on Win7.

Frusterated that I have a Terabyte and a half of HDDs sititng here and I had to resort to installing Win7 on a 30 GB eIDE drive...

 

[Shyaam]

My installation on SATA HDD went pretty well. I am using ASUS M3A78 Motherboard. It hanged alittle while installating but after the Extending part it went smooth.

 

[theog]

Hi spencerjw

Have a look at this link:

silicon image controller

 

[theog]

Hi spencerjw

Have a look at this link:

silicon image controller
Silicon Image - Support - Frequently Asked Questions

 

[spencerjw]

Wow ok, so I read what it was saying but to be honest with you I really am not very familiar with the SATA details and really don't know exactly what I have other than the specific motherboard and the HDDs.

What exactly is Silicon Image? Would I use their drivers regardless of my brand, etc?

Thanks a lot for the assistance, I'm sure I can eventually get this figured out but maybe a *bit* more hand-holding is in order.