First SATA drive - not working

tleslie tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org
Fri Sep 28 10:05:10 UTC 2007


In my experiences if the BIOS cant handle the drive it usually sees it
and allows it to work with the max sectors, etc, that it can handle.

Might be a bugger to debug if you can introduce a new element,
i.e. just plug that puppy into someone else mobo that has working sata.

I have experienced this many a time over the years,
i.e. put in a drive, and it boots up and doesnt see it,
but it takes longer so you know something happening,
and its always been a pooched drive in the end.
In your case it could be mobo because you have never
proven it has working sata.

In the BIOS there might be setting to assign PATA and SATA
to ide0/ide1, different combinations, etc.

I would suggest making sure your BIOS is set up correct for Sata use,
and if that doesnt fix it, find another puter to plug it into,
maybe on college street where you bought it.
Stay away from the "whack with a hammer" fix, that just works 
on old tv sets :)

-tl


On Fri, 2007-09-28 at 00:43 -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> I recently had my /home/ hard drive crash and burn ... that will
> probably be the subject of another post.  The good news is that my
> backup regime worked (mostly).  So this question is about the new SATA
> drive I bought to replace it, but ... I've never dealt with SATA
> before.  I bought a 500Gb WD on College Street.  I have a Gigabyte
> motherboard with an Athlon 2700+ on it which has two SATA connectors.
> The drive will not register in the BIOS (or with the OS the one time I
> tried).
> 
> Steps I've tried:
> 
> - I've reseated the SATA cable at both ends (ad infinitum)
> - I've tried both SATA connectors
> - I've reseated the SATA drive power
> - the BIOS lets me select "IDE" or "RAID" mode for SATA, I've tried both.
> - the BIOS has three sets of two IDE drives, although only two PATA
> connectors: on the idea that the last of these are for the SATA drives
> (am I right?), I went in there and told it to auto-detect.  No joy,
> although it takes much longer to say "no drive" when this new one is
> connected.
> - the drive is powering up and spinning, it can be heard and felt.
> - after the "press DEL to enter BIOS" message there's a SATA detection
> and "User mode" message: this has its own key, and I can enter it but
> do nothing because it detects no drives.
> - I have several computers, but all are older and none of the others
> have SATA to connect to.
> 
> It seems to me that there are several possibilities:
> - the drive is bad
> - the cable is bad
> - the mobo SATA is bad
> - the drive is larger than the mobo SATA chip can handle
> 
> Do I return the drive?  Do I buy a PCI SATA card and cable to put in
> one of the other computers?  Do I whack the mobo or the drive with a
> hammer?  Suggestions are most welcome, as I'm thoroughly chumped (wait
> ... Is that "stumped" or "chumped?").
> 

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