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compy cannot recognize new sata drive

J

JonnyK

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 3, 2004
Messages
2,216
i just got a western digital 320 gig sata2 drive, WD3200KS and my computer will not regonize it. I have two ide drives, one 60 gig with random junk and a 250 with my OS on it. I want to take my new sata drive and make an exact copy of my 250, then format the 250 and use it as my secondary extra drive and keep using the 320 sata as my primary drive.

I have tried hooking things up and booting with every config i can find with my bios options, with just the sata attached, with the main ide and sata attached, several different things like that. Every time my via sata boot option from the bios cannot detect a drive, or it says, Drive cannot be initialized, please check hardware, and the promise raid controller says it cannot detect any drives.

Specs in sig, any help is appreciated.
 
Drive cannot be initalized - that sounds like it is at least detecting it and the drive or cable may be bad.

Do you have another SATA box to test it on to make sure its not the cable/controller? If you at least have another cable try to swap it.Sounds like some hardware is bad...
 
From reading around on old threads sounds like people have had problems with cords so i'll try out different ones, i think i have 2 more data cables just from different motherboards. I will go try it on my room mates pc if i need to go that far. Any more suggestions are much appreciated.
 
I tried it with a few different cables with teh same result. The first via sata boot utility, i forget the exact name, that goes after post can tell the difference between the drive plugged in and not, but it can't do anything with it. And the promise raid program says no drive detected wether i have it plugged in or not. I'm going to try it on my friends compy tomorrow to see if it can get any further, if not i'm going to rma the drive unless someone can see a solution.
 
see if you can update the bios on your mobo... if it doesnt recognize the drive at mobo level I'd try switching out the data and power cords, wiggle them around and take out any bends... do you hear the drive spin up at all?
 
I have updated my mobo since i got it, i will check to see if it's the newest bios, but i think it is. And i cannot "see" the hdd through any menus i've found in the bios or windows. So it's not being detected anywhere. Still have to try it on my friend's pc later this afternoon.
 
Well i put it on my friends computer, which already had a slightly different model, but almost the exact same drive in it. I used one of the data cables i was using and used the second sata power plug from his psu and it recognized it right away, it needed to be formatted but it was there, in the device manager in window s it showed the drive.

So my comp won't even pick it up, i've had this motherboard for a long time, is it looking like my sata ports are bad?

The only different in how i have it hooked up on my rig to his is that i have to use either an old style power connector or a converter from that to a sata plug, and with his i used a real sata power cable from the PSU, would that make a difference?
 
This is the first error i get upon bootup on my computer:

via technologies, inc.via vt8237 serial ata raid bios setting utility v2.01
copyright (C) via technologies, inc. allright reserved

scan devices, please wait...
Press < Tab > key into user window!

Hardware initiate failed, please check device!!!
The bios does not be installed. press <g> to continue!_
--------------------------------
when it says scanning devices press tab, tab does not do anything and then the next message comes up after a few seconds and i can press G to go on to the next utility. I have read different things about the onboard promise controller from different sources, some say it should be disabled, some say it should be in raid mode, and some say it should be in onboard ide operate mode. I don't really know what this is or if i need it to be enabled at all, since i am not doing any kind of a raid configuration.

The second utility that runs is the promise controller one and it says:

No device can be found:
Bios is not installed_

and then it continues on to windows.
 
And if i do boot into windows with the SATA drive connected the os will BSOD after about 30 seconds with a "MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION" i know i've gotten this before for something else but i don't remember what.

code =

*** STOP: 0x0000009c (0x00000004, 0x80545FF0, 0xB2000000, 0x00070F0F)

Beginning dump of physical memory
 
Yeah i looked that up after i posted the bsod error, i'm guessing that my sata ports are fukt? Are there cheap pci slot adapters maybe to add in sata ports that would work? Or am i going to have to wait untill i am able to dump on a new rig to get some use out of this thing.
 
I had an Asus board with another Promise serial ata controller built in... it didnt recognize my SATA drives either, but I did try to put a generation of sata into it that was 2-3 years newer than the board, so I just through the tech had changed and the bios wasnt suited to handle newer gen sata... I wasnt desperate so i just traded that sata model for an IDE one... what I can recomend to you if you dont want to change your mobo for something that can handle it is... buy a PCI SATA adaptor and try that way...

but your best bet, IMO, is to buy someones old board from the sales forum here but first ask them if it handled sata before or simply check out online if things have been reported with it... a neat trick I used before is put the mobo name and model into google and search the forums for ppl with it in their sigs and then watch their setups and ask questions if necessary...

try to stay away from built-in Promise Raid controllers... my MSI K8neo4 Plat has something different, its also built in, but when I picked it, if it had Promise built it, due to my previous Asus experience, I would not have bought it... this ofcourse is my bias, as I'm sure they could have updated their hardware at some point somewhere...
 
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