drive not being detected...

ringo747 · 2 Feb 2007 at 19:36

hi guys, re-installed windows xp yesterday on my pc and fired it up with just one disk in and it booted fine. Added another SATA disk and it booted fine too. Added my third and once the windows xp loading screen goes away the screen goes black instead of bringing up the login screen.

I have a gigabyte kn8s pro mobo which has 4 sata connectors. I have tried all combinations i can think of any nothing is working! I had this problem before when the bios had reset but this one is totally baffling me. There are two sata sockets just above where the graphics card goes. There are two more near the bottom of the board. Anyone got any ideas which drives need connected to which sockets? I really am losing the plot here!

rpstewart · 2 Feb 2007 at 19:51

I'm just grabbing the board manual but it's taking a while - why can't board manufacturers get decent websites???

In the meantime have a look in the BIOS and make sure that all the SATA config parameters look sensible - all set to single drive operation etc.

ringo747 · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:01

lol, yeah some of the sites are absolutely awful. The only bios settings i have ever altered are the ones in the integrated periphals section.

My settings at the minute are:

RAID config - select this and then it shows only IDE Raid as enabled.
- SATA Primary Master Raid is disabled
- SATA Secondary Master Raid is disabled
Serial -ATA 2 (internal PHY) -enabled
SATA DMA transfer -enabled
OnBoard Serial ATA - Enabled
Serial ATA function - BASE
Onboard Gigaraid - disabled

i think these are the only settings that are relevant.

By the way I am not raiding my disks. I already have content on both of them that I want to keep also.

Jonny

rpstewart · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:26

They look fine with the exception of the Gigaraid one, it'll need to be enabled to run more than 2 disks.

When you have the 2 disks running OK which ports are they on, the ones next to the CPU/graphics card?

ringo747 · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:30

yep i have my xp disk and another sata disk connected to the sata sockets near the gfx card. I have my third drive connected to the bottom drive connected to SATA connector on the south bridge i think you call it.

Edit : In the BIOS my two maxtor drives are showing up as ide channel 2 and 3 master. Is this correct?

rpstewart · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:33

The ones next to the CPU are the ones off the southbridge, the bottom ones are the Silicon Image GigaRAID ones.

The problem has to be somewhere in the GigaRAID setup, unfortunately I need to go get another manual

. It's only a meg & a bit, should only take a week or so

ringo747 · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:37

rpstewart said:
The ones next to the CPU are the ones off the southbridge, the bottom ones are the Silicon Image GigaRAID ones.

The problem has to be somewhere in the GigaRAID setup, unfortunately I need to go get another manual . It's only a meg & a bit, should only take a week or so

would it be anything to do with the drivers i installed i wonder? after i booted up xp for the first time it prompted me to install nvidia raid drivers and also silicon image drivers. i just allowed it to connect to the net and search for them.

rpstewart · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:45

jonnyc747 said:
would it be anything to do with the drivers i installed i wonder? after i booted up xp for the first time it prompted me to install nvidia raid drivers and also silicon image drivers. i just allowed it to connect to the net and search for them.

In theory that should work but the symptoms suggest that it might have grabbed the wrong SI drivers. It's probably going to be worth trying to update them in device manager (obviously with just the two working drives attached) using ones from the CD or off the Gigabyte site. Only issue might be if it thinks the ones it has installed are newer, in which case a driver rollback might work.

ringo747 · 2 Feb 2007 at 20:55

ok i will try the driver changes then. Is the silicon image device for the lower 2 sockets and then the gigaraid for another? It really is well confusing! Why cant they all just be together and work? Im told the gigabyte boards do cause a lot of problems like this though.

rpstewart · 2 Feb 2007 at 21:18

The GigaRAID and Silicon Image controllers are the same thing. The physical chip is designed and built by SI then Gigabyte brand it as GigaRAID for their own boards.

I agree it gets confusing because not all GigaRAID controllers are SI, the DS3 & DQ6 boards for example have GigaRAID from a JMicron controller....

ringo747 · 2 Feb 2007 at 21:44

tried rolling back all the drivers and still nothing - i did remember that previously i know for a fact that the gigaraid option was disabled. I do not know why but it still worked! I thought plugging in a hard drive should be simple but always have so many headaches with them.

ringo747 · 3 Feb 2007 at 16:37

have had to give up on this one - been trying every combination of bios settings with every combination of connectors and sockets and still nothing. I have it working with 2 out of 3 disks so i guess it could be worse. Maybe its a problem with the motherboard. Twas working fine before I unistalled windows though. Thanks for the help anyways rpstewart!