SATA HD help.

M

moisiss

New Member
Hi,
I recently bought a WD 250GB 3.0gb/s SATA drive to use as a secondary drive (already have an 80GB ATA-133 drive with windows installed). My board is a MSI K8T NEO-FSR and I put in jumpers on pins 5 and 6 (I think) to reduce the speed to 1.5gb/s (my board only supports 1.5gb/s transfer rates).

I can't seem to get the drive to work though.

I'm not sure if the BIOS is recognizing the drive..... I don't think it is.... but I'm not positive about how to check. The SATA is enabled in the BIOS, but when my computer starts up it says "Serial ch0: no device ; Serial ch1: no device" (not sure if that means anything). Also, in the BIOS when I choose the boot order, the SATA drive is not an option..... only the old 80GB drive and the optical drive show up.

I have read about installing the drivers via floppy drive.... but I don't have a floppy drive.... and it seems like this has been suggested when the BIOS does recognize the drive, but Windows doesn't.

I'm not sure what to do next. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Go into the bios and be sure the drive is enabled or set to auto. Typically there's a "standard" setup where you can specify where the drives are located and what they are(IE 80GB as the primary master IDE...)

As for the floppy drivers, that's for windows installation. If you already have windows on the other drive, you should be able to load SATA drivers just as you would any other drivers.
 
Ok.

So the SATA is enabled. When I go to the setup portion you suggested this is what it says...

Primary Master IDE: 80GB HD
Primary Slave IDE: not installed
Secondary Master IDE: Optical Drive
Secondary Slave IDE: not installed

Floppy A: not installed
Floppy B: not installed


There is no mention of SATA, unless it is supposed to go into one of the Slave slots.... but I don't think it should right?

There is a separate serial/raid screen (out side the BIOS?... I have to hit the TAB button to access it at startup as opposed to the Delete key to access the BIOS), and it says...

Serial Master ch0: no device
Serial Master ch1: no device

I re-checked the jumpers and the SATA cable (changed the cable to make sure that wasn't it.... but I only used the cables that came with my motherboard.... going to try another cable now) and the hard drive is getting power... it feels warm to the touch after the power is on.

So what do I do if the BIOS isn't seeing the drive?
 
Within that other RAID/SATA bios, is there a place where you could configre the drives? My previous Abit AN8 worked similarly, but I can't recall if I had to force the drive or if it was picked up automatically.

I'd also double-check the jumpers, maybe even try without the 1.5Gbps cap.
 
The sata/raid bios won't let me do anything.... it just says that there aren't enough drives for raid and won't let me access anything (and of course says "no drive" for both serial ports).

I re-checked the jumpers.... tried it without them.... still no dice. The jumpers wouldn't go bad would they?
 
Ah... OK. That second "bios" I guess is just for RAID... I'm kind of lost without being able to see what other options are available and such. I can't think of any reason the drive wouldn't work, so it's probably something minor that we're overlooking.

Haha, a jumper's just a piece of metal to short the pins out. I've never seen one that went bad... Well, I did have one where the metal came out. As long as there's metal still in it, they should work.
 
MSIs site is sending me in circles trying to get to the manual. Is there an option to disable the RAID function?
 
So here is a link to where you can download the manual for my mb....

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=manual&maincat_no=1&prod_no=565

You'll notice that it is for my mb and another similar model.... so some of the stuff in the bios section isn't true for my mb and I only have 2 ata-133 and 2 SATA 1.5gb/s ports (instead of the 3 ata and 4 SATA listed in the manual). But it is similar enough....

I don't see a way to disable RAID... but I was having this problem before I even loaded the raid drivers....

I looked at the jumper... it still has metal and looks fine... so I guess it isn't that...
 
Ah thanks. I'm usually good for finding that stuff but after going in circles for like the 5th time I got annoyed.

In the Integrated Peripherals section is VT8237 SATA-IDE Controller set to enabled?
 
Ok, have you checked to see if the drive is avialble in windows? Boot into windows, right click on my computer and pick manage. From there open the storage tree and click on disk management. If it's there you will see a drive with Unallocated space.
 
Try plugging it into the other SATA port with and without the jumper if one way doesn't work and also use different SATA cables. If it still doesn't detect anything I'd replace the drive as it's unlikely that you'd get 2 bad cables and the drive is more likely to be DOA than the motherboard having a problem.
 
Cool.

I've tried everything that you mentioned... with jumpers, without jumpers, both SATA ports, SATA power vs. legacy power, and three different cables!! Haha!!

I'm going to try the drive on my roommates comp. tomorrow.... he has a much newer board that supports SATA 3.0gb/s. So if it is the drive, I guess we'll find out. Other than that, maybe the SATA ports on my MB are bad? This is the first SATA drive I have tried to install on it.... I thought it would be easy! :)
 
It should be easy, if it does work on your roommates computer then it's probably something with your motherboard. It could just be something with the BIOS that we're missing as opposed to something physically wrong with the board.
 
moisiss said:
Hi,
I put in jumpers on pins 5 and 6 (I think) to reduce the speed to 1.5gb/s (my board only supports 1.5gb/s transfer rates).
Click to expand...

When you say 5 and 6, W/D counts there jumpers from right to left. the jumper goes on the second set of pin from the left.
 
Well, I tested the drive on my roommates computer.... and it worked just fine right away. So I guess it's my MB or ignorance.... oh well, the roommie bought it... so I guess I'm just going to buy an ATA-100..... which is weird, because Newegg has like 34 ATA-100 drives and only 3 ATA-133's... but oh well.

Thanks for all of your help.
 
XP can use SATA drives once it's installed. The problem here seems to be BIOS or motherboard related.
 
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