My latest problem driving me insane - SATA controller only recognizes ONE hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter John
  • Start date Start date
J

John

Its got two connections.

The thing is ALL my PCs motherboards Ive bought the last few years
seem to react really sluggishly to changes in hardware - often
blanking out seeming to be dead - necessitating a clear CMOS routines
etc or they act screwy. Its not like the old days where you get a
immediate reponse good or bad and you just fix whatever is bad and it
works rightaway. When I first setup the SATA drives the sata
controller wouldnt work until I kept switching the hard drives and
futzing with the connections ALL NIGHT. Then suddenly like magic it
seemed to work.

Since then its been rock solid with two hard drives. Then I set two
drives in a RAID config - once again no problems. Then I recently
bought some new HDs and unraided the config - since then its been
flakey. It worked with some weirdness at first but then settled down
again.

Now its the craziest thing. It insists on not recognizing one hard
drive. They show up on the boot up screen though once in a while
theres corruption in the detection of one of the hard drives - instead
of WD and maxtor itll show some weird ascII characters. But afte
rebooting itll eventually settle down and detect them. Usually this
happens when I change ANY of the cables, hard disks around on the sata
set up.

However WINXP PRO stubbornly refuses to show more than one hard disk.
Heres the weird part, its not necessarily a particular HD or
connection. But yet its sticky to some degree in regards to the HD.
Ive swapped cables and the same HD will show no matter what connection
or cable or converter I use. So that implies the HD is at fault. But
then Ill start swapping HDs in and out - Ive got 4 of them I can use.
Itll glob on to one of them and then recognize that one for a while so
theres something there but it seems not to be any one HDs fault.
Ive even tried a new intallation of WIN XP pro on another HD to see if
there was something in the WIN XP installation.

ive swapped PSes with a another 400 watter just to see if the Antec
was weakening and taking all other cards and drives out and it still
does it.

Im going to try one more thing - reformat all the drives that are
being detected since I kept them as they were when they were on the
IDE connections.
 
Its got two connections.

The thing is ALL my PCs motherboards Ive bought the last few years
seem to react really sluggishly to changes in hardware - often
blanking out seeming to be dead - necessitating a clear CMOS routines
etc or they act screwy.
Click to expand...

In days gone by you'd mentioned a problem with humidity, has
that been resolved or are there potential connector
problems?

Its not like the old days where you get a
immediate reponse good or bad and you just fix whatever is bad and it
works rightaway. When I first setup the SATA drives the sata
controller wouldnt work until I kept switching the hard drives and
futzing with the connections ALL NIGHT. Then suddenly like magic it
seemed to work.
Click to expand...

A few boards have had their SATA though separate controller
chip, (Silicon Image) and had that controller bios updated
in a motherboard bios update. Is there any commonality to
the controller or it's bios?

Since then its been rock solid with two hard drives. Then I set two
drives in a RAID config - once again no problems. Then I recently
bought some new HDs and unraided the config - since then its been
flakey. It worked with some weirdness at first but then settled down
again.

Now its the craziest thing. It insists on not recognizing one hard
drive. They show up on the boot up screen though once in a while
theres corruption in the detection of one of the hard drives - instead
of WD and maxtor itll show some weird ascII characters. But afte
rebooting itll eventually settle down and detect them. Usually this
happens when I change ANY of the cables, hard disks around on the sata
set up.
Click to expand...

I'd suspect the SATA connectors, the fragile connectors on
PCs have always been a pet-peeve of mine but what can you
do? If it were PATA I'd suspect jumper setting problems but
obviously that can't be it.

You're not overclocking ATM?
However WINXP PRO stubbornly refuses to show more than one hard disk.
Heres the weird part, its not necessarily a particular HD or
connection. But yet its sticky to some degree in regards to the HD.
Click to expand...

If you had a spare SATA controller card, it might help to
try it. Might also help to disable any other onboard
features, remove other cards from system and see if that
makes any difference.

Are the boards running latest bios verison available?
You might find some fellow users of same board(s) at web
forums like http://forums.amdmb.com
Ive swapped cables and the same HD will show no matter what connection
or cable or converter I use. So that implies the HD is at fault. But
then Ill start swapping HDs in and out - Ive got 4 of them I can use.
Itll glob on to one of them and then recognize that one for a while so
theres something there but it seems not to be any one HDs fault.
Ive even tried a new intallation of WIN XP pro on another HD to see if
there was something in the WIN XP installation.
Click to expand...

Are any or all larger than 128GB? Is it possible that only
those larger are being "lost"?
ive swapped PSes with a another 400 watter just to see if the Antec
was weakening and taking all other cards and drives out and it still
does it.
Click to expand...

Is the 12V or 5V rail drooping any, OR is the other one
going up, for example a 12V rail of 11.8 and a 5V of 5.3V?
Do the voltages change significantly when drives are added
or removed?

Im going to try one more thing - reformat all the drives that are
being detected since I kept them as they were when they were on the
IDE connections.
Click to expand...

So these drives are PATA but using a bridge to attach to the
SATA controller now or vice-versa, or ???
 
In days gone by you'd mentioned a problem with humidity, has
that been resolved or are there potential connector
problems?
Click to expand...

HA - thats funny you hit it right on the head I think. Its freaking
BIZARRE. Right after I posted I decided to clean the sata contacts as
the last resort. If connectors are in contact how can the contact
points keep getting corroded ???? The thing that confused me was
there was a bewildering confluence of problems - video, sata etc It
was hard sorting it all out. And the problems was intermittent.

After wasting almost half a week taking it apart over and over and
over and over , reformatting things etc about 10 min ago I decided to
do another test swapping converters and sata cables and HDs to narrow
it down and it seems like it was finally narrowing down to a CONVERTER
problem. I thought maybe I messed something up cause the converters
hang off the HD conection so they get bent a lot. For the heck of it I
cleaned the contacts in it for the sata cable and ZAP - FINALLY all
disks show up.

Ive got to remember that all the time CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN everything.

Heres another interesting thing ---- I constantly bring this up but
this added to the confusion , there would be problems booting and
detecting some of the HDs - the name of the HD would be corrupted. One
of the zillions of times I was switching things around , I forgot to
hook up the fan cables - I have them ALL connected to gether - the
case fans and the harddisk fans. That was also bewildering - the
motherboard was slightly erratic but the bios screen would detect BOTH
maxtors on the sata controller but windows wouldnt detect the 2nd HD.

I have the WD separate with the belly pan that has two micro fans in
it so even without the fans its all alone so it doesnt get that hot.
But the two maxtors I have in the 3.5 cage and the spacing is weird -
it only allows 1/4 of an inch between them --- man did they get HOT. I
mean HOTTTT !!!!! A bit hotter and I would burn my fingers. In fact
there was the garbled ascii letters during initial detection by the
motherboard. I immediately turned them off and plugged in the fans and
they cooled down incredibly only feeling mildly warm. Im starting to
think fans are a necessity for HDs not luxuries.

Im probably going to drill some new holes to space the HDs more apart.
 
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