Ryan, thanks for the input. The answers I have: 1., No, I used blank (unpartitioned drives) and I installed XP. It would not even start without the ATA drive attached 2., No, but WInXP by default has a screen which comes up for 5 seconds or so, asking you to press F6 if you want to install 3rd party controllers 3., Yes, I see all the drives in BIOS but was unable to change the boot drive (BIOS only offers the option of HDD, CD, USB) 4., Might get there after a full WIn install, just did not want to continue without clarifying these. Will see if the F6 at the prompt will help me! If you have any other ideas where to look for, I would appreciate it! Thx again, Gabor -----Original Message----- From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Ryan Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 9:15 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Connect SATA HDD to Asus P5W DH Deluxe mobo -----Original Message----- Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:53:53 -0400 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Connect SATA HDD to Asus P5W DH Deluxe mobo Dear All, I have the am mobo, which in theory accepts 3+2+1 SATA drives (the +2 are to be connected to EZ-Backup and the +1 is an external SATA connection). I bought with the mobo 4 SATA 500GB HDD and 1 SATA CD/DVD drive. The mobo also accepts IDE drives, but I only intend to connect one CD/DVD to this. When I connect all these drives the system would not start. If I connect an extra IDE HDD it starts fine, I was even able to install Win XP Pro x64, but I'm completely unable to access the drives connected to the EZ-Backup. Also the system won't start if I remove the IDE HDD, even though the system is installed on one of the SATA drives. 1., What do I need to do to have the 2 drives connected to EZ-Backup working? 2., Will I need an IDE drive or it should work without it? Any help would be much appreciated, Gabor ------------------------------ Was XP installed on one of the HDD's prior to placement into this system? When you installed XP (on the ATA drive), did you see a setup screen that asked for third party controllers? (SCSI). You will need to install those for the mobo to be able to see the SATA drives. You should have that utility somewhere with the setup discs for the motherboard. You will need to copy those to either a floppy or a CD (although I'm not familiar with the option for accessing them from a cd during initial installation). Have you enabled the particular SATA drive(s) to be accessed from the BIOS? Which one is set to be the boot drive and are they all recognized? Also, you may need another driver to be able to configure how you want the multilple SATA drives to operate. (ie; RAID). Just some "off the top of my head questions" Chris Ryan [log in to unmask] The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website, web based bulletinboard for questions and answers: Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to Digest mode - visit our web site: http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml