SATA drive won't post - Need Help (Badly)

J

JeffS

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 5, 2003
Messages
200
Ok, as the subject said, I'm in major need of some help on this one....
Here's the situation and the details.

MB: Asus A7N8X Deluxe (rev 2.0)
Proc: Athlon XP 2500
Mem: 1 gig
Vid: 9500

I had a raid set previously made up of 2 Maxtor 250 gig drives, that were
actually IDE, but had adapters to make them work as SATA. After one of the
controllers, started to flake out (not always recognizing), I decided to ditch the
RAID 0 array, and flip in a single large HD.

I bought a Segate 750 gig HD, SATA II, and an external SATA->USB2 enclosure. Attached the drive via USB, to copy my data over, and all was good.

Now when I tried to attach the drive to the SATA channel on my MB, it hangs after it identifies the drive on the primary channel. I also tried swapping channels, and had no difference. Yes, I tried different power legs, different cables, pretty much everything that was swapable, I swapped.

The main BIOS screen pops up, passes normally, Then the SATA bios comes up, identifies itself, acknowledges the drive, and then doesn't move past. I've tried hitting both F4 and CRTL+S to go into the RAID configuration of the controller, but it wouldn't budge. No response from the system at that point.

Thinking that something may be wrong with the controller, I tried disablig it via the jumper, and added in a PCI SATA card, and had the exact same result.

It is technically a SATA II drive, but I've got the jumper set to 150mbs so it hopefully shouldn't have a problem. I've also tried it at the native 300mbs setting with the same results.

Now, here is the part where it gets really weird!

If I boot the computer, without the drive attached, everything works fine. If I then plug the drive in hot, it pops up, and works perfectly fine. So I know that both the addin card, and the onboard SATA controllers are functioning. For some reason they are just choking moving past the drive at boot time.

My boot drive is the master disk on the primary IDE channel, so I'm not looking for this to do anything but storage, and maybe be a home for some extra software.

Onboard SATA controller is a Silicon Image 3112A
PCI SATA controller is a Silicon Image 3512

I've flashed BIOS on both of them to the latest, and haven't had
any change in results.

I've also tried asking everybody I knew locally, and got the largest amount of quizical looks and scratching heads I've ever seen in my life.

I throw myself on the mercy of the [H]ardforum. Please help me, I'm totally stuck!

Thanks
-Jeff
 
I'm going to guess your controller has issues addressing drives of that size.

Have you tried some cheapo sata controller with that 750?

Explain how the drive is interfacing with the computer... as in, what drive connects to what?
 
I also picked up a compusa brand "cheapo" sata controller, when I thought something might be wrong on the MB. That is the one that's using a sil3512 chip.

The SATA drive is connected to channel 1 on the pci SATA card.
(aka the cheapo controller)

I've had the same result with both the cheap add-in card, as well as the
controller built into the motherboard

-Jeff
 
Do you have the SATA drivers installed? I know that motherboard was fairly early to the SATA game. :)
 
Drivers are installed, and it works fine in windows. I just can't seem to get it to work will attached during boot.

I've searched the nforce fourms, asus forums, and everywhere else I can think of.

Is there some kinds of bios on the disk itself that could be causing a conflict with the SATA controller?

-Jeff
 
Hmm that is weird.

The next thing I can suggest to you is find somone with a working machine you can test that drive on connected to thier board. Other than that, I'm out of ideas short of replacing components/drive.
 
Is there a spin up delay in the sata bios ?
If your voltages are a little low when you boot then the drive may not be spinning up fast enough so hence the hang.
So try setting it at it lowest value, normaly around 5 secs, and see if that helps.

Luck ........... :D
 
I don't believe that the bios for the SATA controller is conigurable. The one on the MB, would just hang and not allow me to hit F4 to go into the raid configuration, and that was the only config available. The addin-pci card controller doesn't even have that option.

My 5v rail usually runs a little shy of the full 5, but it's pretty close. 12v is on target through.

I'm intrigued by the spin thing, it's something I've never thought of... Though, it pops up fine when I hot-plug the drive...

When the BIOS screen appears for the controller (addin) it shows the drive ID, and the channel it's connected to. It just doesn't go past it...


Hey guys, thanks for all the help and suggestions. This is starting to really bum me out...

-Jeff
 
Hi
sorry I can't help but if I understood correctly, I have a problem which seems a little similar. I have 4 250GB sata drives in a raid 0+1 config. I tried to add a separate 250GB sata internal drive for backups but cannot get my machine to boot with it installed. I've tried everything I can think of, yet I can only use it if I plug it in after boot.

I also notice now that my machine won't boot with ANY external usb drive attached, again all work fine after boot! I updated my bios not long ago to 0903, I think prior to this I was able to boot with the portable drives plugged in.

Sorry if my issue is not closely enough related, I'd be interested in any further discussion on these issues. Thanks

Murt

MB Asus M2N32-SLI-Delux - BIOS 0903
Athlon 64x2 4200+
Sata controller sil 3132
NVidia raid controller driver 5.10.2600.666
 
Here is my latest workaround, and boy is it ugly...
Since there was another post to help resurect the thread, I'll add any info
that I have, and see if there are any more suggestions.

My current boot process, is to disconnect the SATA cable from the controller card.
Boot the machine
Plug in the SATA cable
Login to Windows

If I do it like this, it's fine, and the drive performance is great.

As stated in the previous posts, if I leave it connected durring boot, when
the controller card posts, after the MB, it sees the drive, shows the drive ID
and won't budge.


Does anybody know if there is some conflict with Seagate SATA300 drives (Baracuda 7200.10) and the Sil 3112 and 3514 chipsets? I've got the drived locked in 150 mode, so I wouldn't think there would be an issue, but I'm wondering if there is something deeper at work here than meets the eye.

thanks
-Jeff
 
there are 4 pins on the sata drive, put a jumper on the 2 outside pins. Some older motherboards don't support sata2. You have to force the hard drive to run at 1.5 transfer rate. I had this issue once and this resolved it
 
JeffS said:
Does anybody know if there is some conflict with Seagate SATA300 drives (Baracuda 7200.10) and the Sil 3112 and 3514 chipsets? I've got the drived locked in 150 mode, so I wouldn't think there would be an issue, but I'm wondering if there is something deeper at work here than meets the eye.
Click to expand...
I could not imagine there be a problem, since you have the drive locked in 150 mode.

Also, this thread has a person running a 750GB seagate on the 3112 controller.
 
What is your boot sequence in your MB bios? Also look for something like SCSI = SATA or = PCI and set that to PCI. There are some odd BIOS settings that get labeled differently by different MFGs that sometimes affect this kind of thing.
 
I have EXACTLY the same problem- different mobo- MSI K7N2, SIIG SC-SAT212-S4 controller card for the new drive, 1TB WD SATA. Computer freezes just before Windows XP Pro starts to load but boots fine as long as the SATA drive isn't plugged in. After booting with only the IDE 120GB Seagate connected I can plug in the SATA drive and it works perfectly. I have tried everything. WD tech support was no help at all. Did you ever figure it out?
 
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