SATA drive not always detected

Ponster

Please forgive me if this seems more like a rant rather than a request for help. I often find that writing things down helps me sort things out

I'm running a XP on a home-build PC that I put together a few years back based on a Asus K8N motherboard.

I have 1 IDE internal drive and 1 SATA internal drive.
My IDE is set to master and windows boots from it. The SATA is used for storage.

Yesterday I picked up a second 1Tb SATA drive and have been having problems booting from it. Basically, when I switch on my PC from a cold start the SATA drive is detected in the bios and boots. Should I reboot the machine though it will fail to detect the drive until I:

a) Turn power off/on
b) plug the sata drive out/in after a soft-reboot.


I remember having this years ago when I wanted my sata drive to be master and boot from it. For some reason as soon as there was an IDE drive plugged in the bios refused to boot from the sata no matter what I tried. To simplify my problem of today though I have unplugged all drives but my new 1TB one.

Google helps by letting me know that I'm far from being alone with this problem

bogwalrus

im still having problems with having two sata drives plugged in to my mobo.

the master one is fine but the second storage one when plugged in starts crashing my comp and sometimes doesn't get detected. Have trouble shooted it to death.

I believe that the problem must lie with the motherboard not being compatible in some way. This might be what is wrong with yours. How old is your mobo. If i can remember on my google searches plenty of people were having problems with their mobos not being compatible with certain drive set ups. i.e IDE and Sata and so on......

Ponster

Asus K8N (nForce3) from 2005 I think. Old enough that when bought it it had a sticker on the front saying "S-ATA compatible!!!"

Your probably right. It seems that every time I soft-reboot it doesn't detect the drive yet every time I power down and back up again it sees it fine. Not a driver issue, latest MB bios installed just makes me think that it's a MB age issue.

bogwalrus

i was trying to look up what the exact compatibility problem was with the mobo and sata drives but cant find it. But maybe it could be a sata and SataII issue with you. If your new drive is SataII then it might not work with sataI or just be a bit dodgey. g.luck with it anyway cause i havent had any.

TerrorFirmer

Perhaps more help in the general C&T section.

MunsterCycling

Prob have to jumper that new bad boy 1 Tb drive down to Sata I interface, pity to have to do that though


MC