I'm trying to get a Sata Hdd to run on an older PC main board without sata support.

This is the PC I have:



It's a Shuttle XPC SN41G2 v1 with up to date bios.

This is the main board that is in it:



It has 2 IDE ports, 1 PCI, and 1 AGP but, no SATA ports.

This is the PCI SATA host adaptor I bought:



On the back of the box it says RAID is optional. I know what RAID is and don't what a RAID setup. I just want the SATA drive to be a basic primary drive w/ OS.

After I get everything hooked up, I get a screen like this:



I press Ctrl+S and get this screen:



As you can see from the sreen above, the SATA drive is showing up. This makes me assume the the PCI SATA Host Adaptor Card is Working?

At this point, I don't know what to do. So I escape out of it and continue to install WinXP SP3 (with sata drivers ver)

Then I get this screen:



At one point I did hit F6 and then it started asking about a floppy.

So, I'm kind of lost here. I'm guessing something needs a driver. I'm not sure if it's the PCI sata card driver, or the sata drive that needs it. Also, I hope it doesn't expect me to have a floppy drive to install it, because I have none. I'll buy a usb floppy if I have to...

I've already did my homework and tried reading up on this stuff and I'm usually pretty good with PC stuff but the world of SATA is now new to me.

I've already read up on the seagate site and still can't figure out what I need to do to make this thing work.

Hi
Are there any drivers with your expansion board?
Usually there is an .exe file that creates a floppy for the F6 option during WinXP installation.
It can also be that you can leave the driver CD in the drive, and install the drivers from there during setup (F6).

IF this doesn't work:
What if you press "create RAID set"?
Why is there a "2" next to your HDD?
Is it possible that a specific port should be used for a single SATA?
I see at your Controller description, that RAID is optional, so SATA should be the "default" setting.
Hope I gave you something to check on.
Can you keep us updated?

"Hi
Are there any drivers with your expansion board?
Usually there is an .exe file that creates a floppy for the F6 option during WinXP installation."

Yeah, the expansion board came with a Drivers & Utility CD.


There's a bunch of folders in it. Looks like this:



On the back of the box, (first post) it says it uses the 3124 chipset. Looking at the above pic, you can see there are two 3124 folders. one of them a raid one and other a non raid one.

I want non raid because I want to use a program that claims not to support any type of raid.

So here are the contents of the non raid 3124 folder.



As you can see, there is no exe to make a floppy image with. I'm not sure if I should just past those onto a floppy or not. Of course the fact that I don't even own a floppy drive doesn't help much, but I'm sure I could find one laying around somewhere. (aren't those things obsolete by now? lol)

OK, I tried pressing F6 during the Windows installation but the Windows Disc demands a floppy drive and won't read the drivers off the CD, which sucks

So, What I ended up doing was going back to that grey setup screen (first post). I went into "Create Raid setup" and then chose an option called "Concatenation"

I have no Idea what that word "Concatenation" means so I looked it up in a dictionary. It means to combine or link. I think the option is for linking several hdd together and then having your OS system see them as a single drive.

Well, I did use that "Concatenation" for the lack of other options and was able to install the OS, however, I don't think that was what I was trying to archive because when I look at the device manger it looks like this:



*PS Never mind the fact that my HP 1500 printer drivers are not installed.

under SCSI and Raid Controllers it says:

"Soft Raid 5"

Again, I really do not want any type of a raid setup for fear it will not work with this other program I want to use.

So, what I think I need to do is, re-format the drive again and go back to F6 thingy in Windows setup and get it to install the drivers that way. The only question is HOW!! Errrrrrrrrr

"It can also be that you can leave the driver CD in the drive, and install the drivers from there during setup (F6)."

yeah, I wish. This is also what I was hoping for...


"Why is there a "2" next to your HDD?"

I think I can answer this one for you. The card has 4 sata ports. 2 internal and 2 external. On the internal ports, printed on the board are J5 and J6.

When I plug it into J6 it then reads "3" next to my hdd. And if I had to guess, using J1 and J2 on the external ports would result in a "0" and a "1" next to my hdd respectfully.

"Is it possible that a specific port should be used for a single SATA?"

no, I don't belive so but there is a jumper pin next to the Raid eeprom. Have no idea what it does though. lol

"Can you keep us updated?"

Sure Can

Thanks for any help or even thoughts / ideas, and opinions.

It's been about 5 days without reply so please take this a as super polite...bump.