Trying to add a SATA Drive to Gateway Profile 5

Hi, Thanks for being here. I have an old Gateway Profile 5 that still works!! Gateway PROFILE 5 Enclosure Type: All-in-One Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 (build 2600) 2.60 gigahertz Intel Celeron 8 kilobyte primary memory cache 128 kilobyte secondary memory cache 2046 Megabytes Installed Memory Board: Gateway Desktop System PROFILE 5 Bus Clock: 100 megahertz BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD P02.865G 12/02/2003 It came with a PATA IDE hard drive. I have upgraded to a larger drive twice already but now I’m looking at installing a faster drive. The Motherboard has a SATA Data connection. I am hoping to get some information on changing over to a SATA drive. Connecting, power connection, drivers, whatever. I have all the original CDs but I’m not sure if it has or needs SATA DRIVERS or if the drivers are installed by default. There is a folder on the driver’s CD named “Sata” but the "Readme" speaks of Intel 82801ER and my Device Manager shows 82801EB. I believe this has to do with a RAID setup. It may help: Serial # 1099497286 Part# 2900077 Well I hooked up a healthy 160 Samsung SATA drive with five partitions to be a second drive. Windows Disk Management saw it as single partition 8.0 GB, Basic, online and Healthy. Windows Explorer saw the drive as a single partition but reported it as not formatted when I tried to access it. I went into the BIOS. It saw the drive. Samsung*** Port 0 (zero) The Default settings were: (1) Extended IDE Drive-“AUTO” The other choice was “NONE”. In AUTO it reported 8585 MB In NONE it reported 0 (zero) (2) Access Mode- “AUTO” The other choice was “LARGE” I tried “LARGE” No luck. Same results. There are no problems during booting. Motherboard: Intel® Springdale-G (Intel 865G + ICH5) Using Intel® Chipset Identification Utility; ——————————————– Chipset: Intel® 865G chipset family Chipset Components: Memory Controler: 82865G/GV I/O Controler: 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R, SATA and PATA enabled Integrated Graphics: Intel® 82865G Graphics controller Device Manager also shows; SCSI and RAID controllers: AID4NB0O IDE Controller So now I guess I’m looking at flashing the BIOS or something somewhat risky. I am loath to do that. The BIOS update was not to solve this issue. I even tried booting into UBCD4Win and got the same results. Any advice is more than welcome. Joe

Hi, Its easy to damage these machine by an incorrect attempt to flash the BIOS……. if you get it wrong then the motherboard usually needs replacing….. My best recommendation for you is to leave the internal hard drive as it is..the old PATA/IDE works generally just fine…. USB External hard drives are considerably less hassle if you just need a bit of extra storage….. putting a faster hard drive in this computer may have an effect on performance, but its likely to be so small, as to be practically unnoticable. However if you are determined to go ahead with a further upgrade then you should first consider all the risks involved and try and complete a cost benefit analysis……if after this you are still determined to go ahead, despite the small additional benefit and risks….. then you may wish to consider the following: 1 Dont even think of flashing the BIOS unless you are convinced it will benefit you greatly and or fix a serious problem caused by an old BIOS… 2 It is NOT recommended to flash the BIOS unless you are operating through a good quality UPS with battery in good condition and fully charged…..(a power cut [outage] whilst flashing the BIOS will really spoil your day, and your machine) 3 If you are determined to use a SATA hard drive then make sure you have the correct SATA driver available on floppy drive, and that your floppy drive is correctly installed and working. If you wish to use a workaround to avoid the need for installing a specific SATA driver by altering the BIOS (set up), then be sure you know exactly how to do this before proceeding. If you do not wish to use the BIOS work around (as there may be a tiny performance hit) then as an alternative you can include the driver into a slipstreamed version of your WIN XP installation disc. 4 As well as all personal safety and ESD (antistatic) precautions hard rives are very sensitive to shock and must not be subjected to high G loading..this can cause them to fail immediately or even a few months after the event. To sum up 5 It is unlikely that a faster drive will have a significantly noticable effect on the general speed of your computer in day to day computing tasks…..however there may be some difference in the "benchmark" figures pre and post instal. 6 If despite the disadvantages you are still determined to go ahead then you will need to prepare carefully, and proceed with utmost caution… 7 I would strongly recommend that you create a disc image of your existing set up using Acronis, Paragon, Ghost or one of the free disc imaging applications, verify the image and keep a copy safe on removable media,. If you make a bootable disc this will also help ……. but not if you damage the BIOS/motherboard……. Good luck with this…and proceed slowly and very….very…. carefully! Regards paws

Thanks paws, Yes, I did not think that messing with the BIOS was a good idea. In any case, the BIOS update was not dealing with this problem. I think I will just install a larger IDE drive. The question remains, why does the SATA second drive show up as *GB. Thanks again, Joe