Sata HDD

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by MrNice, Oct 25, 2006.

  1. MrNice

    MrNice Kilobyte Poster

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    Aloha,

    Having some technical difficulties at the minute with one of my lab pc's, any help would be most gratefully recieved.
    Saturday morning pc crashes, when it tries to reboot it is unable to find HDD? Thought it was a faulty HDD but it doesnt detect in the bios at all, so I tried a different HDD, not new but from my main machine, still bios does not detect any HDD?

    Both drives are Sata 150's
    Mobo is MSI 865PE/G neo platinum
    P4 3.0Ghz
    XP Pro

    All cables and connectors have been replaced.
    I started going down the line of the Sata controller on the mobo southbridge is somehow faulty, only the 2 Sata connectors on same channel i think and neither work. I have this USB fault finding nonsense that came ith mobo which lights in sequence to display faults and it reports nothing. One of the tests it does is initialize the disk controller. However i have no idea if it doing what i want and if the results are being read correct. Entire system is just under 2 years old so am suprised at this fault if it is mobo.
    I have a replacement mobo on order, very limited choice of sckt 478 boards with AGP connectors now.
    Does anyone think its the HDD?
     
  2. Baba O'Riley

    Baba O'Riley Gigabyte Poster

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    Can you try an IDE hard drive? It's possibly a BIOS setting somewhere that is causing the problem.
     
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  3. MrNice

    MrNice Kilobyte Poster

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    Yeah i also went down that line, unfortunately all my HDD are Sata, i trawled the bios for settings relating to this and nothing came up, It would be most unusual for the bios to change a setting with no interaction anyway. The POST reports no problem, if i try to boot from XP cd i get the "windows is unable to locate a HDD and is unsble to continue.
    Thanks for the input
     
  4. AJ

    AJ 01000001 01100100 01101101 01101001 01101110 Administrator

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    Have you tried booting from the XP CD and pressing F6 when asked to install the SCSI drivers (and SATA drivers), insert the floppy disk when asked with the SATA drives on and trying to repair the install that way?
     
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  5. Boycie
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    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    I had an almost identical problem recently with a PC.

    One day, out of the blue, the machine won't boot. The BIOS didn't display any hard drive (IDE). A replacement mobo and it was up and running again.

    Let us know how you get on.

    Si
     
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  6. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    There *should* be a BIOS setting enabling the SATA controllers. Also - if this board can do RAID there may be some setting there that has got messed up.

    Harry.
     
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  7. Sparky
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    I’ve seen the same thing, you may have the option of 'SATA device' in the boot sequence as well.

    Following on from what the other guys have suggested, why not put the driver for the SATA controller on a floppy and then press F6 when prompted during the Windows install. The install will look for previous installations of Windows. If it finds nothing then try another HD, same again? Looks like a mobo issue then and perhaps flashing the BIOS to the latest version could be an option. 8)
     
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  8. MrNice

    MrNice Kilobyte Poster

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    I tried the bios setting enabling the sata option, it done nothing. The mobo does support raid but the settings are disabled, I dont have the Sata controller driver files, and am having great difficulty finding them, certainly never came with mobo manuals etc.
    The entire system was a build (by me) and i never had to install any third party drivers on the initial XP installation, I have never been required to do that and always use Sata HDD.
    Thanks for the input everyone, guess I will just have to wait on new Asrock mobo, only sckt 478 one i could find anywhere!
    All my newer systems have sckt 775 but i never realised the 478's have been all but discontinued.
     
  9. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    I found that almost every install I did with Windows XP needed a 3rd party driver for the HD when Sata drives first came out.

    Did you install Windows XP with SP2 on the same disc? Perhaps SP2 includes some sata drivers...
     
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  10. MrNice

    MrNice Kilobyte Poster

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    I have been searching for a driver for this to no avail, I have used both XP bare and XP inc SP2 on various systems (20+) and have never had to install the driver manually. This system has always used XP inc SP2. It's weird, no HDD option is visible in the boot menu, I guess because the system is unable to detect any, used to be right there?
     
  11. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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  12. Raffaz

    Raffaz Kebab Lover Gold Member

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    I had a similar problem a while back. I sorted mine out by loading the BIOS defaults. Dont know why it worked, but it did :)
     
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  13. G1BB0

    G1BB0 Nibble Poster

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    I have a p4 478 using a gigabyte mobo (matx)

    the only way to use sata is to go into bios and set sata 0 as ide 0 it will then install to the sata drive as a standard ide drive (no 3rd party drivers required)

    not sure if its the same on your mobo, depends on bios tbh. without going into bios right now i cant be more specific.... let me know tho and I will try and add more info if required
     
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  14. hbroomhall

    hbroomhall Petabyte Poster Gold Member

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    IMHO Gibb0 is on the right lines. If you didn't load any drivers for XP then it must have been set in the BIOS for the SATA controller to emulate IDE. If you do this then drivers aren't required (usualy).

    Check the BIOS again for this option.

    Harry.
     
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  15. MrNice

    MrNice Kilobyte Poster

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    After going through the bios several times i replaced the mobo and the problem is now gone, everything working fine on new board. Thanks for all the input.
     
  16. Boycie
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    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    oh good, glad you got it sorted :thumbleft

    Si
     
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