K7VT4A Pro and Samsun HD103UJ

[HitManJ]

I spotted a SATA jack on my mobo and decided to pick up the Samsung HD103UJ.

I see nothing in the BIOS setup about the SATA. Windows sees nothing. I pulled down Samsung's "Disk Manager" but it doesn't see it either.

What I read about the K7VT4A Pro was that it has on-board SATA 1.5. The HDD is SATA 3.0. Didn't think that would matter. The literature for the Samsung says they have a utility if there is a problem (never found it on the website, though)

Am I off base or is something missing?

Thanks!
J

[HitManJ]

So I found an article saying you need to jumper 3/4 to put the SATA II drive on a SATA I mobo. Nowhere online can I find the pinouts for the HD103UJ. There are only 4 pins (as opposed to the 8 I see on IDE drives).

Anyone?

[bldegle2]

with four pins your choices are down to two......assuming a standard left to right config on the pinouts, it would be the two on the right for 3/4.....

your HD may be in RAW format, if so it basically is blank, you need to format it..

contol panel>administrative tools>computer management>disk management will get you started...

bet the proper pinout will help too...

laterrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..................

[HitManJ]

"Windows sees nothing" not even in Disk Management.

And, I tried the jumpers (even though Samsung said you should use the software).

Update: I found a floppy drive and used Samsung's Disk Management software and it didn't see the disk, either.

Any help?

[HitManJ]

Well, I can't figure this out. For the first time, this forum couldn't help, either. :-(

Looking at PCI and USB SATA controllers now...must be cheaper than a new mobo/RAM/proc.

J

[Vindir]

Sorry to say it's kind of an issue that I haven't had to think about before.

Samsung is pretty much impossible to contact with about the only contact info you could try being the contact us link at the bottom of their page. If you're desperate you could try emailing their RMA support from that link.

Just for kicks, can you confirm the pins you jumpered match the image at this samsung link?

http://www.samsung.com/global/system...tionjumper.jpg

[HitManJ]

There are only two pairs of pins. I tried jumpering them like that photo once with no luck.

[Nemesys]

If I recall correctly, the chipset on that board has no ATAPI support. This was a common issue with early SATA controllers.
ATAPI support is required to run optical drives.

Hence the SATA devices are limited only to SATA hard drives.

You may want to exploit the options provided by a PCI add-in card with ATAPI support, or revert to IDE technology for your optical drive.

[RealBeast]

Did you install a sata driver as described in section 2.9 of the motherboard manual?

[HitManJ]

Nemesys, my Samsung is an HDD...not optical.

RealBeast, that section is about trying to install Windows on a SATA RAID drive. I neither want RAID nor want Windows on it...just looking for a new D: drive for storage.

Also, I bought this Mobo "OEM" so no CD. Can't seem to find one, either. Any ideas?

Thanks guys!

J

[RealBeast]

. . . RealBeast, that section is about trying to install Windows on a SATA RAID drive. I neither want RAID nor want Windows on it...just looking for a new D: drive for storage. . . .

While poorly worded pseudo English, it explains how to create a SATA driver disk, which can either be used for RAID or not. Either way you need a SATA driver in the OS to use a SATA drive. Take a look in your system control panel under IDE ATA/ATAPI drivers and see if you have a SATA driver listed -- on some of these old boards you needed to install one even in XP. If you are running a newer version of XP you might be able to install a SATA driver manually if you don't have one listed by adding a device.

If you don't have a SATA driver and cannot install one, buy a cheap SATA controller (~ $20).