Windows Won't Recognize SATA Hard Drive - PC Hardware Questions & Answers

Mike writes in with a hardware question

Question: I got a new SATA drive from Western Digital. It's a Caviar 500GB. Windows is not recognizing the hard drive on ABIT KV-80. I think I've got all the settings correct in the BIOS. I tried to download LifeGuard dos/floppy to a CD. That seemed to work. Then tried to copy 'all files' to a floppy disk in A: on the computer and the file is a tad too big. How can I get windows to recognize the hard drive? Will I definitely need the Lifeguard? Thank you.

Answer: The first thing I would do is check Disk Management to see if its listed there as a foreign drive that you can import into Windows. If so then you can import it, assign it a drive letter and be on your way.

align="left"Also check your POST screen and make sure its listed with your other drives when it shows on the startup screen. You can use the Pause key on the keyboard to pause the startup process if it goes too fast.

If its the primary drive and you are going to put Windows on it then your motherboard CD should have come with some SATA drivers for the controller that you can use during the Windows installation when it says Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver during setup.

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