My motherboard: MSI K8N neo4 (geforce 4)
Disks:
1. 160 gb western digital sata disk (working)
2. 320 gb western digital sata2 disk (the new one, can't get it working)
OS: Windows XP (SP2 installed)

The problem is that the 320gb disk is not shown nor recognized in bios. The 160gb disk works fine. 160gb disk is connected to sata1 port on motherboard, and the 320gb disk is on sata2. All raid options are disabled in bios. All "sata ports" are enabled in bios.

The 320gb disk does not show in device manager in windows neither...

I have the 320gn disk's jumpers set to 150mbs mode (jumpered as "SATA 150 Only), I'll try next to take the jumper off.

What I want to do is to add a second disk. Any ideas how the 320gb disk to work?


I thought this was going to be a walk in the park, but wtf. Always the same problems with shi*** sata. Tried to google stuff but I just got pissed!

Visit a friend who has a spare SATA-port on their mobo to check if the disk is faulty?

EDIT: Stupid non-helping suggestion, sorry.

There are several revisions of the particular motherboard you have (namely, SLI, F and Platinum). The Platinum and SLI models suport SATAII, while the F doesn't. If you have either the SLI or the Platinum you should be able to take the 150MB/s jumper off, and run it natively as a SATAII drive. If you have the F, however, the drive will not function without the jumper being present.

I know this may sound like a silly idea, but have you tried using the 320GB drive attached to the first SATA connector? If it works that way, check the 160GB drive with the second connector. If neither drive work with the second connector it could point towards a problem with the motherboard. If it doesn't, then it is almost certainly an issue with your new drive, and I would contact the store/online shop you bought it off and get a refund/replacement as soon as you can.

I'm thinking that the disk is faulty. I just tampered with the connectors, the 160gb remains in sata1 slot but I moved the 320gb disk connector to sata3 connector on the motherboard. Now the original 160gb disk has changed its status in bios, as well there is an empty spot, where I think the new disk shoul be. When I try to recognize this "empty" spot on bios, it just hangs there. I don't think it should take more than few mins at most...?

I'll do a reboot and post a pic of it now

EDIT1: It's the ultra version of MSI K8N neo4
EDIT: Now I'm completely puzzled. After I tampered a bit more with the connectors I managed to get the disk recognized by bios, and shows in device manager too. I plugged the disks toto sata3 and sata4 . I guess it's something really mystic, sata1 and 2 don't work together, 1 and 3 don't work together but 3 and 4 do?

Never again sata drives... Thanks for the help, though I bet little fairies had more to do with it than we together

I think part of the idea behind SATA was to get rid of the old Master/Slave thing, but in reality I'm pretty sure it still exists. It could be your BIOS settings, as well, perhaps something related to Master/Slave.

Forbin: In all the SATA controllers that mimic IDE that I have seen, the ports are each assigned a Master/Slave configuration by the motherboard ie the first port will be master, second slave, third another master on a different channel and so on. The main reason for this is that the conventionat master/slave/cable select jumpers on IDE drives don't exist on SATA ones, so the motherboard needs to handle that side of it.

Hyperactive: The Ultra you were referring to is nForce 4 Ultra, which is the chipset on it, which supports SATAII. You will be able to take the compatability jumper off and run it natively. If it doesn't work, then my bad, I am wrong on that occasion.

The issue of the ports is a strange one, which I can't seem to get my head around. But as long as both drives work, that should be all that matters at this point, and the issue with one motherboard should not put you completely off SATA. It is, after all, the future of Hard Drives, and when faster physical media is around then it will be fully utilised, unlike at the moment.

Quote from JohnUK89 :

Hyperactive: The Ultra you were referring to is nForce 4 Ultra, which is the chipset on it, which supports SATAII. You will be able to take the compatability jumper off and run it natively. If it doesn't work, then my bad, I am wrong on that occasion.

Yes, well I tried with both jumper off/on with the 1st and 2nd sata slots. But I got it working after I started to mess with the other sata slots.

Btw. Is there any good reason why XP does not have sata drivers in itself?

The main reason XP doesn't have SATA drivers built in is that it never has had. SP2 was introduced when SATA was in it's preliminary development, and it was not that certain that it would become the standard it is today.

As a sidenote, Vista's SATA support is much better, and you will be able to load drivers off USB sticks too, instead of just a conventional floppy. I won't be using Vista though, I'm a Linux man now :-D

Check the SATA port you've plugged it into is actually enabled in the BIOS and SATA RAID isnt enabled.

Quote from Hyperactive :

All raid options are disabled in bios. All "sata ports" are enabled in bios.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Check the SATA port you've plugged it into is actually enabled in the BIOS and SATA RAID isnt enabled.

I think the problem is starting to fade away. I just booted my system and it gave me the "hard disk not found, insert boot disk"-error on start. I just restarted to bios and changed the firing order (=starting order ) of the hard disks. Again it's a mystery why it did work perfectly last night when I partitioned and formatted the drive and the did a test boot.

JohnUK89: What I meant was that why they haven't updated the XP since it's launch. The installation cd (OEM) I got did have SP2, but no sata support (drivers) iirc.

EDIT: Added the pic describing my prob when I got the strange bios hangup on recongnizion, look at the "IDE fourth master". Just nothing

Quote :

What I meant was that why they haven't updated the XP since it's launch. The installation cd (OEM) I got did have SP2, but no sata support (drivers) iirc.

As said, SATA was not really fully developed at that point, and all the SATA controllers that are on the market nowadays simply didn't exist. WinXP SP2 does, however, have support for SATA itself, which is why drivers were quickly written. As you probably saw when you installed XP, it recognises it as a SCSI/RAID interface, which is not always true, but for hardware support it is enough to get it working at full speed.