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Today I ran across a Dimension 8400 that would not recognizes the SATA hard drive for a reformat. I did some digging and came up with two different problems.

1. If you don’t have your resource CD then you will need to first download the drivers for the SATA raid controller. Click here!
You will need to get a blank floppy and run the .exe program you downloaded from Dell. Run that and it will create a floppy disk with the drivers for you.
2. Go into your bios and change the mode of your SATA controller to a mode called “combination”.
3. Reboot and boot from your windows CD.
4. Press the {F6} key to install the SCSI drivers.
5. Press the {S} key for specific drivers.
6. Insert the diskette pick the first driver by hitting enter and finish the installation
7. The rest of the install of windows is normal.

Key Notes: You must change the sata controller in bios to “combination” or you install will never see the drive.