Why don’t PC upgrades go easily? huh? huh?

Actually I have had worse experiences, but anyway..

I decided I needed a new hard drive for a number of reasons

1. I’m almost out of space
2. I AM going to intall Linux on my desktop (finally) and make that my primary OS.

Looking around I decided on the Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II without actually finding out if I could run it! I already had 2 HDs and figured I would have to swap on out. As it happens that wasn’t necessary as I had not used any of the SATA channels on my Abit KV8 Pro motherboard, or the SATA power connections on my PSU. On top of that I even had the space in my case for it!

All was looking good.

Attached everything, fired up the PC, entered the BIOS. Nothing. It didn’t see the drive. TBH I had no idea what to expect - would it see it on an IDE channel? I already had 2 HDs and 2 DVD ROM/RAM drives installed so…erm…

Ignoring that I booted Windows XP. Nothing. Hmmm..

OK. Time for the Ubuntu live CD. Booted. Nothing. Double Hmmm..

Time for a trip to both the Abit and the Western Digital sites as well as a flick through my motherboard manual (which was no help!)
It didn’t take me long to find out that:

1. Windows XP does not natively support SATA drives (downloaded a VIA SATA driver off the Abit site)
2. My SATA interface has a problem with SATA II drives and the BIOS will not see them as there is a problem auto-negotiating the transfer speed. There is a quick fix for this - install a jumper on pins 5-6 to set the speed at 150 MB/s. This is documented at the Western Digital site.

So I jumpered the pins and it still was not seen in my BIOS, however the SATA RAID utility appeared on Boot! Excellent! Booted Windows - still nothing. ARGH! I delved into device manager and Windows XP had not started the damned SATA driver I had installed! So I started it and up comes the drive. Of course Ubuntu was seeing it fine…

Two hours of formatting later and I have a new Hard drive installed.

Finally! I now had 500GB more space and am going to use it all for data, this will free up my second IDE drive for Linux.

Next. The installation :)