Hi Troy,

> Troy Dawson wrote:
> > Hi,
> > My machine currently has 2 regular hard drives.  One of the hard drives 
> > started going bad, so I needed to replace it.
> > The motherboard does SATA, so I figured I'd get a SATA drive since 
> > they've come down in price.  I got a nice 320 Gig drive from seagate, 
> > put it into the machine and ... windows doesn't see it.
> > Linux see's it just fine, so I partitioned it in the linux side for 
> > windows because windows often has a hard time with blank drives, but no 
> > luck.
> > My motherboard has two SATA controllers.  One is VIA, and the other is a 
> > Promise Fasttrack.  I have tried putting the drive on both controllers. 
> >  I've put on the drivers from my motherboard CD.  Still nothing.
> > The only indication I get that something is on there is the VIA comes 
> > with a RAID confuration program.  It shows the drive, even gives lots of 
> > details, but Windows just won't do anything with it.
> > Oh, and when the drive was on the promise controller, I tried it doing 
> > RAID and doing the Plain IDE.  Neither worked.
> > Oh, this is Windows XP, if that's important.
> > I guess if I can't get it to see the drive, I'll just use the whole 
> > drive for Linux and forget about my Windows.
> > 
> > Any ideas?
> > 
> > Troy
> > 
> > p.s. Yes, this currently is happening to me, I'm not making this up.
> > p.p.s. No, I don't really expect anybody to really answer this.  I just 
> > couldn't resist sending this considering the number of "it works on 
> > windows why not linux" e-mails we get.
> 
> Try to create an installation CD with the latest service pack 
> integrated. It is possible that they had added recognition for 
> your/any SATA controller in the latest service pack.
> 
> If this does not work, you can wait for V*sta in January (for 
> businesses V*sta is available now). Of course you will eat up all 
> your horsepower to minimize/maximize windows, but that is what 
> W*ndows is all about. :-)
> 
> Also, you can go virtualisation and install Windows under vmware or something.
> 
> So, in summary what I would do:
> 
> 1) Integrate the latest service pack in an installation CD, and try 
> installation from this.
> 
> 2) If this does not work you can wait for V*sta in January, or use 
> virtualisation to install XP, or do not use W*ndows.

So you know, what he's talking about above on point 1 is called
"slipstreaming" Windows XP. I've done it before and it's straight forward.
Saves you the trouble of installing XP from original CD's and then taking the
next n days and n reboots to update it to current patch levels.

Even current levels still need patching :)

Michael.