SATA PC Peripheral Controller Card

[BobH]

In trying to extend the utility of a little used desktop, I bought a new 1Tb HDD and installed it. Lo and behold, the new HDD is a SATA drive and I was out of SATA ports on the the old Dell mobo. I had an open PCI card slot; so I went to Newegg and found a 4 port SATA controller card and installed it; but I'm having problems configuring it.

The user instructions (I hesitate to call it a "Manual") state that there are 2 ways in which the card can be configured - RAID and non-RAID - and provides identification of the appropriate driver to select. I have been completely unsuccessful configuring this new controller as non-RAID. For some reason, I cannot get to the selection of the correct driver and always end up with the RAID configuration. I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the card and the driver several times from the CD that came with the card. I have been unable to ascertain whether the HDD is working because I cannot get Device Manager to recognize the device as a non-RAID HDD.

I am installing this large drive as a second, non-booting drive in the old Dell desktop. I do not wish to reinstall WindowsXP but to simply add the additional SATA ports to the system and configure them for regular non-RAID use to control the new HDD.

Would anyone care to suggest things that I should do to overcome the problem? The CD apparently has the correct drivers (at least the directories indicate it's there) but I cannot get to it to install it. I have not found an autorun file.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[viking33]

In trying to extend the utility of a little used desktop, I bought a new 1Tb HDD and installed it. Lo and behold, the new HDD is a SATA drive and I was out of SATA ports on the the old Dell mobo. I had an open PCI card slot; so I went to Newegg and found a 4 port SATA controller card and installed it; but I'm having problems configuring it.

The user instructions (I hesitate to call it a "Manual") state that there are 2 ways in which the card can be configured - RAID and non-RAID - and provides identification of the appropriate driver to select. I have been completely unsuccessful configuring this new controller as non-RAID. For some reason, I cannot get to the selection of the correct driver and always end up with the RAID configuration. I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the card and the driver several times from the CD that came with the card. I have been unable to ascertain whether the HDD is working because I cannot get Device Manager to recognize the device as a non-RAID HDD.

I am installing this large drive as a second, non-booting drive in the old Dell desktop. I do not wish to reinstall WindowsXP but to simply add the additional SATA ports to the system and configure them for regular non-RAID use to control the new HDD.

Would anyone care to suggest things that I should do to overcome the problem? The CD apparently has the correct drivers (at least the directories indicate it's there) but I cannot get to it to install it. I have not found an autorun file.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Bob,
I'm kinda stretching my memory on this but I THINK that XP will not recognize a 1 Tb HD as such. ( seems there was a size limitation somewhere? ) Again, this is just the thought that popped into my head when I read your thread.
Have to do some Googling to confirm this.

[Bigaldoc]

... For some reason, I cannot get to the selection of the correct driver and always end up with the RAID configuration...

Before I start, my Googling sez that the max hard drive size in 32-bit XP is 2 TB so that shouldn't be the problem.

This is a shot in the dark. You say you think you can see the non-Raid directory on the CD, so how 'bout this try. In Control Panel, Add Hardware and see if you can "manually" point the thing to the driver you need. Hmmm...