I am attempting to connect a 2nd SATA drive just to pull files from it. My system tries to boot from this 2nd drive vs the first drive. are there jumper settings to keep the 2nd drive from being the master?

Try setting the jumper on the IDE hard drive to SL (ie slave).

Hi horashadow, yes I have a 'suggestion'!
"Go back the the "Boot Priority Menu,"
and make 'either the "HDD, Optical Drive or SATA Drive,"
the first {Boot Option}. The Boot.ini file, Master Boot Record file, or the Boot NTLDR file,
will more than likely be in one of these [Devices].
"Give it a try. "I hope it works out for you.!
Take a moment to give a rating for the help, thanks"

In the BIOS, change the Boot Sequence so that the SATA drive precedes the IDE drive

One needs to be a master and one needs to be pegged as a slave. You can have seperate OS..Win 7 on ons and XP on the other then at post screen you can select which OS you want.

Suggest you connect the plextor to the SATA port 3 and set it's jumper to Master. All SATA drives are seen as Master drives. (Check the serial number on your WD SATA drive "Primary".
Enter the bios menu. Within page 3-7 section 3-3 Advanced bios features. Check, 1st, 2nd and third boot devices.
Floppy disk drive as, 1st boot device. 2nd boot device, "Primary WD SATA port 1". 3rd boot device, CD-ROM drive SATA port 2, Plextor 880sa drive". Save and exit the bios. If you no longer have you're manual you can download it from the link provided below;
http://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/download/fae/ic7-g_eng_v101.pdf
Check page 3-13. See OnChip serial ATA Mode. As noted, the RAID option is available when the item "OnChip serial ATA" is set as [Enhanced Mode].

Cheers'
Mike

You should have an option on the dc7100 in bios to enable sata in the devices section. Mine always worked fine with sata. If nothing else works remove the security chip, reset the cmos and reboot with the Hard Drive connected and it should connect. If that doesn't work Try flashing the bios just in case it got corrupted.

Enter BIOS SETUP, and check the "boot order" (after connecting the SATA drive) -- ensure that the SATA drive is *NOT* the *FIRST* boot-device.

It is possible that Bios/Cmos battery is not maintaining its charge. You might want to pull the cmos battery & check its voltage with a volt meter. It should retain 3volt DC. If it reads lower than 3v replace the battery. Once replaced you will need to reset all bios settings. If the battery checks out ok than continue.
The soulation to your problem lies within the Bios not your hard disk drive. Set the jumper you moved to slave back to master. Re-connect the SATA data & power connector to the motherboard. Boot up your PC & start pressing the Delete key on your keyboard every two seconds untill the Bios menu opends. (See page 2-14 section 2.3) in your manual.
You can not use your mouse while in the bios. Read page 2-12, section 2.2.1). This will explain how to move about while in the bios. Once the Bios opends you will be at the main menu. If your SATA drive is correctly connected you will see its model number listed there.
If you have two SATA drives connected you should see both. Take note of which is the master SATA1 drive. All SATA drives run as master drives. While in the Bios, SATA drives are shown from top to bottom. First /top drive will be the master drive. Next drive down is considered as slave.
Than open (OnChip SATA controller). Set this to [Native Mode] or to [SATA]. See page 2-16, section 2.3.5
Than open Boot. See page 2-30, section 2.6, Open Boot Device Priority section 2.6.1 Here is where you need to set the boot order.
(The boot order is not set correctly & this is why windows does not see your hard disk drive & showed the message "No hard drive listed").
If you have a floppy disk drive connected to the system set it as,
[1st Boot device]
Change 2nd Boot Device to [CD-ROM]
If you have two CD/DVD-ROM drives in your system make sure you set the Master CD/DVD-ROM here & not the slave CD/DVD-ROM drive.
3rd Boot Device should be the primary [SATA1 drive], connected to SATA1 port on the motherboard. See page 2-30 section 2.6.2
The drive with windows installed shoud be listed as 1st.
Save your changes & exit the bios. Your system will auto re-start.
If you had a working operating system on the drive it should load.

If you need the motherboard manual or drivers you can download them from Asus web site link below;
http://www.asus.com/Search.aspx?SearchKey=P5S800-VM

Cheers!
If you are still having troubles, post your question here.
Mike

In one system that I have seen this one, we had loaded optimized defaults. One item you could look at are the jumpers and the SATA ports if the connections are correct.

To get Windows to recognize the 2nd HDD, you have to initialize it in disk management.

http://www.simplyguides.net/guides/prepare_second_hdd/prepare_second_hdd1.shtml

As far as the drive letter for the OS install, that was caused by the HDD not having an existing partition and other drives in the system having one (Either USB Drive, Printer with a card reader, 2nd Internal HDD)

Here is a Microsoft article on how to change it, but you'll notice MS doesn't recommend you try it. (Personally, I can live with ah HDD with a drive letter other then C:, so can Windows.)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en-us

In the future, when installing XP, boot to the CD, run the install to the point of formatting the hard drive. Once formatted, turn off the computer, reboot to the XP install again, the HDD will be assigned C:

As far as the drivers go, they needed to be installed in this order:
Desktop System Software
Chipset
Video
Audio
Network
Modem