SATA bullshit

[GONNAFISTYA]

I have 2 SATA drives in my computer. One day I was watching a movie (avi...on an external USB drive) and my computer locked up.

Upon rebooting (after pressing reset) my mobo doesn't recognize both drives. It's weird...if one of either drive is connected, the BIOS finds it, but if both are connected, it only detects my smaller (non-boot disk) drive.

Like I said...both drives work and are recognized when only one is connected, but if two are connected, it only finds the non-boot disk.

Any thoughts?

[AmIdYfReAk]

Change the Harddrive boot priority in the Bios?

[GONNAFISTYA]

Both drives aren't detected by the BIOS if both are plugged in.

And AFIAK...SATA controllers use whichever drive is plugged into the first slot for booting...so there's no need for master/slave settings or boot priority.

[DTS]

Have you tried disconnecting the USB drive?

[GONNAFISTYA]

Yeah. Actually...ever since I got my new mobo I have to disconnect the USB drives when I boot or it won't even get past the mobo splash screen. Fucking stupid since my mobo supports boot up with USB drives connected...just not anymore.

[Tsakali]

Amid is right, you need to tweak your boot options

it might be an option other than the bootup hierarchy...look around in there

and as to why this only started happening now, it could be a glitch, maybe a power failure or a battery hickup that might have reset your bios options

[GONNAFISTYA]

Both drives aren't detected by the BIOS if both are plugged in.

[zolborg]

I know this doesnt help much, but I have the same problem sometimes. Usually if I enter BIOS, save and exit it will boot fine......although at times I have to do this several times before it works. Sometimes Bios shows no drives attached, except for cd/dvd drives. After several tries, it will show the sata drive[s] and then it doesnt always work. I just keep playing and cursing and finally it will boot normally.

I have an Asus motherboard[very high end] although several years old.


When it is misbehaving, and I check the boot settings, it does not show any hard drives to boot from. Keep trying and I hope it will do what mine does and eventually work.

As for the other posts, it has nothing to do with boot settings, it is just the motherboard fucking up I assume. I have never found a real solution to this.

[Foo]

Check you've got RAID settings disabled throughout the bios.

[zolborg]

Raid settings on mine are off. Sorry, forgot to mention that.

[Therac-25]

how many sata connectors do you have on the motherboard? i have like 6 on mine. if you have spares, put them there and see if they're detected or something.

i know on mine, the boot order menu had two different sections. it had a "hard drive order menu", in addition to the main "boot order menu".

the main boot menu only had one entry in it for a hard drive, and whichever one showed up was the one at the top of the "hard drive order" menu, which was on a different page. it took me a little while to figure this out, as i was trying to boot off of the second drive to get grub working.

edit: what's your motherboard?

[GONNAFISTYA]

I have an ASUS P4P800 SE board and I only see two connectors.

I've flipped cables between the drives (in case one was fucked) but it didn't seem to be the problem.

When I connect both drives and go to the boot order section in the BIOS it only shows my non-boot disk and my DVD drive as potentials....so I can't pick my system drive to boot from.

I have to say though (although this is a fresh board that I bought a couple of months ago) that I've been having problems on this machine when more than one drive is connected ever since I bought it 4 years ago (exact same mobo). My old company's IT guy built it for me and managed to get my SATA (system disk) working with 3 internal IDE drives. Then one day six months later my machine wouldn't find my boot drive if other drives were plugged in. An omen of things to come?

Dunno...maybe this mobo just inherently hates multi-drive connections? (which is why I've had to buy so many external USB drives)

[GONNAFISTYA]

Regarding external USB drives....do they make them for SATA drives...so I can use the 250 GB of data on my non-boot drive?

I don't specifically care how I access the data on the second disk...I just wish that I could.

[obsidian]

Yes, they make them for SATA drives and even eSATA if your mobo supports it.

[Therac-25]

just reading your motherboard manual

on page 2-27, there's a bit about setting the ide mode to "compatibility mode" (for legacy oses) vs. enhanced mode (for modern oses). make sure enhanced mode is set, as the compatibility mode seems to disable drives to make things work in windows me.

there's also an ide detect timeout setting in there, could try making sure that's non-zero?

[zolborg]

just reading your motherboard manual

on page 2-27, there's a bit about setting the ide mode to "compatibility mode" (for legacy oses) vs. enhanced mode (for modern oses). make sure enhanced mode is set, as the compatibility mode seems to disable drives to make things work in windows me.

there's also an ide detect timeout setting in there, could try making sure that's non-zero?

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, sata is not ide

[Therac-25]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, sata is not ide

...? i figured it was worth a shot that the ide timeout option that was directly below the sata mode configuration on the same bios screen might be messing shit up. the pata and sata stuff are done by the same controller.

[AmIdYfReAk]

if you're running the drives in Legacy mode, IDE timeout will apply to them, as enhanced mode, it wont..

[GONNAFISTYA]

Well I just solved my problem after fumbling about in the BIOS for 10 minutes...I bought a USB external SATA drive enclosure.

[Tormentius]

...I bought a USB external SATA drive enclosure.

Quality fix