P5P800 versus Maxtor 300GB SATA

[Ken]

I have (had) a replacement P5P800 MB from ASUS with the latest and greatest
BIOS version that would not boot when I connected one or both of the 300 GB
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 drives to one or both of the onboard SATA ports. These
drives worked for 6 months on the "old" P5P800 MB. The old MB failed for
unknown reasons unrelated to the SATA drives. The old board also had an
outdated BIOS version. ASUS and Maxtor do not seem to think it is a
BIOS/Hard Drive conflict. ASUS is sending me a third board thinking that
the SATA controller is bad. I have Googled a little and found that other
people have had similar problems with exactly the same hardware and
mentioned BIOS/Maxtor Firmware issues. I'm about ready to break down and
order a Maxtor SATA controller and forget about the onboard SATA controller
since I would like to use the computer again sometime this year. Any first
hand experience would be appreciated.

 

[Ken]

In case anyone is interested, the third MB from ASUS works as advertised
with the Maxtor drives. Probably because I panicked and now have an
unopened box containing a new Maxtor SATA controller sitting on my desk.