Disappearing SATA drives

Gliding_Nut

Gliding_Nut

Gliding_Nut

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28 Dec 2006
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Help, another little weird one for you!

I'm re-building an old PC for my mum comprising a 2.6 P4 on an Abit IS7 motherboard. Attached to the motherboard are two Maxtor 120GB SATA drives using the motherboards onboard SATA connections.

I'm just in the later stages of installing the OS and all the software but every now and again on booting, the Hard Drives 'disappear' and aren't detected by the BIOS! Re-starting doesn't seem to cure it, but unplugging and re-plugging the SATA lead to the drives leads to them being redetected and all is well once more! I've updated the BIOS to the latest version on the Abit website (bearing in mind its now an 'archived product') and I've changed the power supply to a new OCZ high spec model but this seems to make no difference.

Any ideas? I know that this was one of the early SATA boards that Abit did, but do you think I've some latent defect on the motherboard or am I doing something wrong? Its not a major job to re-plug the cable now and again, but I don't want to really hand this over to my Mum with such an ongoing issue. Do you think that buying a PCI / SATA card and plugging the drives into this would be a better option than the onboard SATA plugs?

Thanks as always.
 
Sounds like you've taken most of the normal steps for diagnosing this sort of thing but there are a couple of others you could try:

  • Maxtor's HDD diagnostics program - link in the sticky
  • Different cables to see if it's a connection issue

However the fact that it's both drives disappearing (at least I assume so from what you've said) points to the controller on the board. A PCI card would seem a sensible option but I wouldn't go for it until you've established that there's nothing wrong with the drives or cables.
 
Hi,

Yes it is both drives and whilst I haven't tried alternative cables yet, I'm struggling to believe that both cables (or both HDDs) could be defective, so I am leaning towards the controller argument.

Presumably a PCI SATA card has its own built in SATA controller which would bypass the one on the Gigabyte board?

Cheers,
 
Gliding_Nut said:
Presumably a PCI SATA card has its own built in SATA controller which would bypass the one on the Gigabyte board?
Click to expand...

Correct. I would suggest, however, that if you go for a PCI card that you make sure it supports bootable drives, some of the cheaper ones don't.
 
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