Motherboard: M848ALU V2.1
SATA Controller Card: Syba SATA3112-150R
Hard Drive: Maxtor MaXLine Plus II SATA 250
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Motherboard doesn't support SATA.
Motherboard does recognize the SATA Controller Card as well as Windows XP.

Driver installed for Controller Card, but XP fails to see the SATA drive.
MaxBlast 4 for Windows and DOS doesn't see the SATA drive.

SATA drive has power and has the data cable. (Both are firmly plugged in)

What am I doing wrong?

...but XP fails to see the SATA drive.
Where are you looking for it? Windows Explorer? The Storage part of Computer Management? Device Manager?

Windows Explorer? The Storage part of Computer Management? Device Manager?
None of those see the drive.

Even tried to do a fresh install on the SATA drive, but XP fails to see it even after the Controller Card driver is accepted.

If windows XP disk managment and fdisk from a dos floppy and maxtor utilities from a floppy all fail to see the drive - try going into the card's raid setup and see if it is recognised there and then see if you can add it as a single disk configured as a RAID-0 (stripe). I have seen this happen on a biostar mobo with promise fastrak controllers - where a single sata (or a single ide) added to it must be configured as raid before anything can see the drive.

If this is just a windows problem consider searching for the most up to date drivers.

http://spamguarder.home.comcast.net/sata.jpg

I am given the option to press either (Ctrl+S) or F4 to access the card's raid setup. It says that no device is found.
There was one time that the controller card did find the SATA drive (post BIOS) without any intervention on my part. But no more. :(

As far as I can tell, I do have the most updated drivers for Windows.

But if the controller card can't see the SATA drive post BIOS, I'm not sure what is wrong.

Data cable is on JP1 (Master) on the controller card.

I am given the option to press either (Ctrl+S) or F4 to access the card's raid setup. It says that no device is found.
I was able to make a slight progress. I was finally able to access the card's raid setup.

I am not able to setup RAID-0 because there is only one drive on the controller card. SATA drive was seen on JP1, but no size was displayed. Tried to format, but that didn't work.

I exited the setup and the boot process (F8) seen the drive on BB-0, which is correct. Windows booted, but yet again, no drive listed.

Rebooted to redo the process, but again, F4 showed no drive.

I'm back to step 1 again.

I'm starting to think there is hardware issues with the card or drive or both.

Data cable is on JP1 (Master) on the controller card.
SATAs are not designated Master/Slave - since there is only ever one drive per cable.

On the Syba SATA Controller Card, there are two slots labeled JP1 (Master) and JP2 (Slave) for the single line cable. I was only referring that I had the cable in the first and foremost logical slot. :)

But nevertheless, after a week of this, I'm RMA'ing both items.
As far as I'm concerned, these 2 items are incompatible with each other and I had enough.

I have the same problem as you, but it is a hardware issue i have tried the 3112 and the 3512 is seems there are 2 driver to use with this products. If thats not a sign of things to come what is? One for raid one for stand alone. There is no documentation from the maker or the seller (maker: Silicon Image seller: syba or kaser) about how to troubleshoot or make it work. Im sure if they had done some basic testing they would have found an issue with a maxtor drive. N e ways get rid of the silicon image chips and get some other brand. If you install the ide (single sata disc) driver windows cant initialize the device and if you boot into bsd it kernel panics. CraP by another name
:p

heres an update
it turns our that maxblast said the drive was bad
so its no the sata controllers fault i actually got an adapter
and when i got home and installed windows it the floopy has sil 3112 drivers in it
i felt like a jackass because i went from a $20 part to a $45 inferior