SATA Drive Q

[chuck]

Just replaced the SATA drive in my main pc
so now I have an xtra SATA drive.

My backup pc has 2 SATA ports, so I connected
the old SATA drive to that port and used a
SATA power connector. When the pc powers up,
the SATA drive itself kinda hums -- it gets power.

During BIOS startup, the SATA drive is found,
and in the BIOS Setup panel SATA is enabled.

But the SATA drive does not show up in the BIOS screen.

When I boot into XP Pro SP3, the SATA drive is not
present.

Suggestions??

 

[Paul]

Just replaced the SATA drive in my main pc
so now I have an xtra SATA drive.

My backup pc has 2 SATA ports, so I connected
the old SATA drive to that port and used a
SATA power connector. When the pc powers up,
the SATA drive itself kinda hums -- it gets power.

During BIOS startup, the SATA drive is found,
and in the BIOS Setup panel SATA is enabled.

But the SATA drive does not show up in the BIOS screen.

When I boot into XP Pro SP3, the SATA drive is not
present.

Suggestions??

Is the motherboard chipset from Via Technologies ? Like
a VT8237 ? If so, install the Force150 jumper on the
back of the hard drive, and try again.

If you don't know what is in your computer, either give
the make and model number ("Dell Dimension 3100") or
the motherboard make and model number ("Asus A7V"),
so someone can figure out what you're trying to do.

It wouldn't hurt to know the drive make and model number
as well. Hitachi drives don't have jumpers on the back,
and there are different instructions for those.

Some motherboards have a couple SATA ports that connect
to the Southbridge, and a couple SATA ports that connect
to a separate RAID controller. If there is no driver
in Windows for the RAID controller, that too might hint
at why you haven't seen it yet. So if you have two groups
of SATA connectors, you'd better point out which set
you're using.

Paul

 

[Terry R.]

On 12/6/2009 3:31 PM On a whim, chuck pounded out on the keyboard

Just replaced the SATA drive in my main pc
so now I have an xtra SATA drive.

My backup pc has 2 SATA ports, so I connected
the old SATA drive to that port and used a
SATA power connector. When the pc powers up,
the SATA drive itself kinda hums -- it gets power.

During BIOS startup, the SATA drive is found,
and in the BIOS Setup panel SATA is enabled.

But the SATA drive does not show up in the BIOS screen.

When I boot into XP Pro SP3, the SATA drive is not
present.

Suggestions??

Hi Chuck,

You say the SATA drive is found during BIOS startup, but doesn't show up
in the BIOS screen? Clarify?

Do you have the RAID options turned off?

Are you sure the old drive is spinning up, not just humming? Listen
closely when you power up. You should be able to hear it spin up to speed.


Terry R.

 

[chuck]

You say the SATA drive is found during BIOS startup, but doesn't show up
in the BIOS screen? Clarify?

Do you have the RAID options turned off?

Are you sure the old drive is spinning up, not just humming? Listen
closely when you power up. You should be able to hear it spin up to speed.

When I boot with the SATA drive connected, during the BIOS boot
sequence I see a SATA Primary drive identified as drives are found
during the boot sequence.

But after I stop at the BIOS Setup screen I see Pri and Sec
Master and Slave IDE drives, and I see SATA is enabled. But
I do not see any SATA drive identified there.

There are no jumpers on the back of this Seagate SATA drive.
The MB is an ASUS P4S800D-X.

 

[Paul]

When I boot with the SATA drive connected, during the BIOS boot
sequence I see a SATA Primary drive identified as drives are found
during the boot sequence.

But after I stop at the BIOS Setup screen I see Pri and Sec
Master and Slave IDE drives, and I see SATA is enabled. But
I do not see any SATA drive identified there.

There are no jumpers on the back of this Seagate SATA drive.
The MB is an ASUS P4S800D-X.

For the Seagate, look for a row of four pins - X X X X
That is room for two jumper positions.
Fortunately, your chipset is SIS, and it
is possible the drive is negotiating OK with
that. The problem might be though, that the
SIS SATA is RAID oriented.

You can check the label anyway on the Seagate drive, as it
might show jumper options. It can't hurt to run a
drive Force150, as it hardly makes any difference
to normal performance.

The manual has conflicting info. One screen shows
a BIOS setting "OnChip SATA Controller" [RAID mode] while
another shows only Enable and Disable options for that.
At the very least, it should be Enabled.

ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/mb/sock478/p4s800d-x/e1753_p4s800d-x.pdf

In section 2.6.4 Boot Settings, there is also an
"Interrupt 19 Capture" option, and that should be
Enabled. INT 0x13 hexadecimal (19 decimal) service is
used for booting, so having that option enabled, means anything
with a boot capability will be usable. The "Add On ROM
Display Mode" would be associated with things like the
code used for the SATA RAID BIOS code module. If the SATA RAID
is enabled, you may even see some message about scanning
for disks.

"When set to Force BIOS, third-party ROM message will
be forced to display during the boot sequence."

Now, Asus has a few documents about RAID on their
support web site. The closest one is for SIS 180. The
very last page of the document has this comment about
using a single SATA drive.

http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/SiS180.pdf

"Using Hard Drives as Non-RAID

Drives connected to the SiS RAID connectors do
not have to be set up in a RAID array in order
for them to work. By simply not assigning them
to an array, they can be used like any other drive
connected to the board’s main IDE connectors."

So that implies, it is possible a single drive
connected to your SIS964, will work just fine,
even without entering a RAID BIOS screen and
setting up the drive.

You'll still need a driver added to WinXP. Asus
offers this one. But you can occasionally get
software directly from SIS ( www.sis.com , there
are downloads but I cannot link directly).

http://dlcdnas.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/ide/sisraid105.zip

On the SIS site, the download is raid411a.zip and it is
11.3MB in size.

Once you install a driver, and the BIOS setting for the
SATA is enabled, you should be able to see a single
drive connected. Check Device Manager, for signs
the SATA RAID driver is installed, and something got
detected. Then go to Disk Management, to see your
new "array". That is my best guess.

Paul

 

[chuck]

Thanks for all the good info! I installed the SIS RAID drivers,
rebooted, connected the SATA drive, and rebooted again.

Bios starts and lists the SATA drive as found ... then goes
no further. Cannot get into setup at all.

Disconnect the SATA drive and all goes well again.

 

[chuck]

Whoa! In BIOS setup just toggled between
Southbridge and Northbridge (What are They???)
and low and beholt, the SATA disc shows up in
XP Pro explorer.

Mucho Thanks!!

chuck

 

[Paul]

Thanks for all the good info! I installed the SIS RAID drivers,
rebooted, connected the SATA drive, and rebooted again.

Bios starts and lists the SATA drive as found ... then goes
no further. Cannot get into setup at all.

Disconnect the SATA drive and all goes well again.

In this post, Ulrich suggested using the Force150 jumper, but
the OP in the thread didn't post back. Seems the person here
had trouble like you describe.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...d_id=1&model=P4S800D-X&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

I'd try looking through a few more threads on the VIP forum,
but their server is playing up right now.

I don't know if Ulrich knows for sure the SIS doesn't negotiate
properly. The Seagate document only suggested VIA chipsets had
this problem. I've never seen SIS mentioned. It was supposed
to be possible for a SATA300 drive to work with a SATA150
motherboard - for example, you can connect a SATA300 to a
SIL3112 (SATA150) chip and it works. The only issue with SIL3112
was a BIOS add-in module bug when a 1TB drive was connected.
So I don't know what to make of this. You could try the
Force150 jumper and see what happens. Since the BIOS is
able to report the drive identity, that suggests to me
that in fact the interface has negotiated to 150 and
is working fine, and that implies some other info coming
from the drive has upset the BIOS. Like it checked for
RAID metadata and got stuck or something.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...d_id=1&model=P4S800D-X&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

These guys seem to have got past the BIOS screen, but
can't see their new drive in Disk Management.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...d_id=1&model=P4S800D-X&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

I checked the BIOS history file here, and don't see any
mention of a problem.

http://support.asus.com.tw/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P4S800D-X

I found another manual here, which I presume is the same
as the SIS180 one.

http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/SiS964_965.pdf

I see your options at this point as:

1) You can try the Force150 jumper, but since your drive is
showing as detected in the BIOS, I wouldn't bet on this
absolutely and for sure, fixing it.

2) Install a PCI SATA card and access the disk that way. Maybe
you could zero out the drive, then connect it back to the
SIS964 SATA port and try again. The available selection
of such cards, isn't that nice. Check the reviews of any PCI SATA
card, before you buy it.

3) Use a SATA to IDE adapter. I keep one of these around, if
I want to connect a SATA drive to an IDE ribbon cable.
(The hardest thing with one of these, is getting the
ribbon cable off the adapter afterwards.) Other brands
of these may be cheaper. Also note, that there are IDE to SATA
and SATA to IDE, and you have to be very careful when buying
these, to get the right one. The shape of this particular
one kinda gives away the function.

http://www.startech.com/item/IDE2SAT-25in-and-35in-40-Pin-Male-IDE-to-SATA-Adapter-Converter.aspx

4) Check the disk on another computer with more compliant SATA
connector. Zero the drive there (reformat or whatever), making
sure you erase right up to the end of the drive. What I'm hoping
to do, by formatting the drive, is erase the RAID metadata area,
in case something up there is the problem. The RAID metadata is
located near the high end of storage.

I see enough "success" cases in Google, to not give up on it
just yet. I don't think the SATA is completely borked, or only
works in RAID configurations. People have got it working with
single drives.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Paul]

Whoa! In BIOS setup just toggled between
Southbridge and Northbridge (What are They???)
and low and beholt, the SATA disc shows up in
XP Pro explorer.

Mucho Thanks!!

chuck

Well, I don't know what you changed, but glad it's working

I see items in the manual, arranged under Northbridge and
Southbridge entries. Did you change something in there ?
I don't see anything related to SATA there.

*******

The chipset helps glue everything together. This diagram
shows how your Northbridge and Southbridge fit together.

CPU
|
| FSB
|
AGP --- Northbridge --- Memory
|
| (Hub bus)
|
PCI --- Southbridge --- USB
| |
SuperI/O IDE/SATA
|
Floppy

When the CPU wants to read memory, if fetches data
over the FSB (front side bus). The Northbridge translates
the address and read or write request, into a command to
the memory.

Your disks are located further down in the diagram. Every
device in the diagram has an address, and that is how
the digital interfaces figure out where a request is
going.

Paul