Can't see SATA drive after XP reinstall

[player2]

Hi guys, well after an aborted MS service pack update a little while back, and a resultant backout that left me with a damaged system, I decided to do a complete XP reinstall to fix the things that the aborted update mucked up. All has gone well, except I cannot see my SATA drive under Windows. Everthing was working OK (in this department anyway) before the reinstall... OS is Win XP SP2 plus updates, system is a 2.8ghz HT CPU with 1 GB RAM, 2 x 160GB WD drives (one system disk, one back up disk) plus a 500GB WD SATA drive. The 2 x 160's were picked up OK but not the 500GB SATA (which as you would expect, has all of my data files). Will try powering off and reseating cables etc tomorrow morning, but I think this is a long shot. In the meantime, any ideas you may have on this would be appreciated....

Cheers
P2

[ssrattus]

Serial ATA Modes

The Serial ATA (SATA) controller has three modes of operation:

* IDE mode - no AHCI, no RAID
* SATA mode (sometimes called AHCI mode) - AHCI enabled, no RAID
* RAID mode - AHCI enabled, RAID enabled

NOTE: Your system may not have all three options, depending on the motherboard manufacturer and model.


Driver Used By Each Mode

The Serial ATA (SATA) mode in the system BIOS determines which operating mode your system is using, whether you need the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager, and which I/O controller you should choose during the F6 installation process.

IDE mode uses a different driver than SATA and RAID mode.

* IDE mode uses the native Microsoft* driver and does not require the F6 installation method.
* SATA and RAID mode both use the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager and require the F6 installation method.

You probably need to either:

Load SATA drivers for your motherboard SATA controller to see your SATA drive in SATA mode (AHCI mode)

or

Go into your motherboard bios and look for SATA settings, you will want to set it to IDE mode to see it again if you don't want to bother with the extra features of SATA and RAID.

[fandtm666]

GO TO

control panel/ administrator tools / computer management / disc management

if you see the drive there assign it a drive letter.

i have had this happen a few times but more so with external drives

[Chimp]

i had the same issue about a week ago, with two new drives. Do what fandtm666 siad and it should work fine.

[player2]

Jeez you guys are quick....
Thanks for your replies on this one.
Well, this had me stumped for a while. There were no unallocated drives in disk manager, and I thought bugger reloading the mobo drivers (as things had been working OK before the WinXP reinstall). Anyway, that's what I did, and up she came... both partitions on the SATA drive are now fully visible and accessible.
All I need to do now is to reinstall the 33 apps/tools I need to get me back to where I was previously.
Thanks for your guidance on this one guys.

Cheers
P2