Hi I'm having a little trouble with a Western Digital sata hdd that i just purchased
and I'd like some help. I have 2 hdd hooked up to my comp and I'm trying to hook up the sata hdd to make it my third hdd in my system. When i plugged my sata hdd in and started my comp it didn't register,im just wondering why. I read up on some information that told me that i didn't need to use a jumper on the hdd and I also read another that said i need to use jumper 3 & 4 for a multiple hdd system which is what I'm trying to do. I also checked to see if my mobo(motherboard) jumper was set to enable sata and it was so im really at a lose on what to do. oh and also before my comp loaded up it tols me to hit ctrl+s or f4 in order to go into my raid and in there it had some options like create raid, delete raid,low format, and i believe there was one other but im drawing a blank to what it said.

Currently the only significant jumper with some 3.0 SATA drives is one that allows them to be recognised as slower older 1.5 SATA drives on cards or mobos that only support 1.5 speeds.

Are the two exiting drives PATA or SATA?

Enabling or disabling or assigning to RAID or SATA or to PATA/IDE-emulation are all done in the BIOS setup and not (to my knowedge so far) to physical mobo jumpers.

The separate BIOS setup for RAID (after ctrl+s or f4) would only apply to your drive if already assigned to RAID in the main BIOS setup. If not assigned it cant appear there.

the 2 existing drives are pata/ide.

well what i was trying to do was make the sata drive my slave. i guess im not able to run the sata unless i have another hdd exactly the same and using that raid stuff and that I'm only sata 1 compatible and not sata 3.0.

so i guess i dont need help anymore because i just purchased a sata usb enclosure for the hdd.

If you are happy then that's fine. However if there was a SATA socket on the mainboard then the drive must be configurable to be used internally and should not need to be used in a RAID. I have only ever seen that once on an old Biostar motherboard when SATA first came on the scene. In that case the single SATA could be configured as a lone drive in a RAID0 (without any other drives being added to that RAID array).

If, either for your own interest or for the future, you want to know how to configure the drive then post the details of the make and model of your mainboard or your PC.

"the make"??? does that mean like manufacturer if so then its a asus a7n8x-e Deluxe. its an old comp, i got it back in 04. if you need any other information about my PC i'll try to give you it, im not the most computer savvy so i might need you to dumb down the question if it gets to technical.

I haven't been able to get the manual yet (the Asus site is being iffy) but two things. (1) There are a number of reports with this board having issues with SATA drives. (2) The board is definitely 1.5 speed (http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=217&l1=3&l2=13&l3=56&l4=0) so you should jumper the 3.0 HDD to only allow it to operate at 1.5 speeds. Then see if you can see the drive anywhere in the BIOS setup. I cant help out with exactly where without the manual, which I cant get yet because I cant even get to the download page.

i dont know how to reduce it to a 1.5 and while i had the drive i my PC it would read it only in the sata raid config. do you know what jumper i would have to set the hdd on all i know is that 1 &2 are default and 3&4 is pm2 mode(no clue what that means)

Which model of WD drive do you have? As far as I can tell you should leave the jumper for 1/2 Default SSC-mode as it was when shipped (usually jumpered). You should leave jumper 3/4 PM2-mode unjumpered (this is only for enterprise environments and requires a compatible BIOS). WD gives conflicting advice for pins 5/6 OPT1. Some say this is for factory use and some say it needs jumpering to set the 1.5 speed setting. This WD advice probably changed when they started shipping 3.0 speed drives so it is worth trying to jumper 5/6 since your mobo is 1.5 speed SATA.

Please also confirm that you have looked in Device Manager (to check which drives are detected and that there are no yellow punctuation marks) and then also in Disk Management (run diskmgmt.msc from the run box) to see if the drive is detected there but unformatted. New HDDs ship unformatted and they need to be correctly initialised with a 3rd-party tool or by Disk Management before My Computer can see and utilise them.

If the drive definitely does appear in the RAID BIOS then either that is the only place it will appear or it can be added/removed from the RAID BIOS by another setting in the Main BIOS.

No harm in trying to add it to a RAID-0 (stripe/performance) array - all on its own. If it is accepted on its own (without complaining about the normal need for at least a second HDD in a RAID-0 array) then it is possible that this will work. As I said earlier I saw this to be required with a Biostar BIOS of about the same vintage as your board. I still cannot download the manual from the Asus site to have a look at the BIOS section.

The only other thought I have at this time is that the drive is too large (>120gig) for your particular motherboard BIOS.

its a wd caviar se 16
model wd4000aaks

i have looked in disk management but i never saw the hdd in it i only saw my pata hdds.i didnt even think about checking device manager for any question marks,totally skipped that.

well i just updated my scsi and raid controller in device manager and put the sata hdd on jumper 5&6 and now my PC is reading the hdd YAY!!!i dont know how to format it though. heres a pic http://s29.photobucket.com/albums/c291/050886/?action=view&current=hdd.jpg

RightClick on Unallocated in Disk Management and follow the initialisation wizard or else partition and format. Partitions can only be formatted after partitions have been created.

THANK YOU SIR PAUL
my hdd works great

It's always nice to get a result. Enjoy.