New harddrive help!

Evol · 5 Jan 2009 at 16:50

Hey Overclockers,

after some feedback on the post I made last night regarding a faulty harddrive, I have infact confirmed the harddrive has had its day after running a diagnostics test from a DOS bootable floppy I made earlier today.

Ive been and bought myself a brand new Samsung 620gb jobby, and now I have a new problem..

After connecting the new harddriver to the SATA and power sockets, and booting up the PC expecting to be able to install a fresh copy of windows on the thing, I find that the harddrive is not being picked up at all, wether it be in the BIOS or on my startup screen.

I have the RAID controllers for my motherboard ready and waiting to be used on a floppy disk here, but it would help if the thing was at least being recognized as being there for starters.

What have I done wrong? I am 100% that it is not a cabling problem, or faulty harddrive as this is the second one I am trying with today, the first one returning the same problem, which leads me to believe it is a BIOS problem and may need a setting adjusted to find the new harddrive.

The only thing I am doing different to when I was using the old harddrive (which was always picked up), is that I am using a cable adaptor for the power cable on my new harddrive. Again I am pretty sure it is not the adaptor, as this is the second one I have tried using today.

If it helps, my motherboard is an ASUS K8V SE Deluxe

If anyone can help me out I am eternally grateful, 2 days of no computer with access to business related files is starting to have an impact. Im in desperate need of help, and would rather not pay a professional to do it for me, unless I really have to..

Apologies for the wall of text.

EDIT: Just read a small instructional that I received with the harddrive, which basically says to go into the BIOS should the drive not be recognised, and manually enter its details. Its a shame samsungs english is awful, but it says to go into "User Define Mode", which I have no clue how to do. If this is the solution, please advise on how I do this!

ChrisLX200 · 5 Jan 2009 at 16:57

My guess: you have a motherboard that only supports SATA I (150) and you bought a SATA II (300) drive. Most hard drives can be made backward compatible either using a jumper, or using the drive utility booting from the DOS floppy disk. You need to reduce the maximum speed to 150. Whilst this is claimed to be 'automatic' and all SATA II drives are 'backward compatible' in practice it isn't so. I had an ASUS AV8 with the same issues. The utility will hopefully search and find the drive regardless of whether the BIOS sees it or not (my Seagate just used the jumper to set speed).

Evol · 5 Jan 2009 at 17:03

Im sorry, but what utility is this and where can I find it? A Jumper? can you elaborate on this option?

EDIT: or is it worth me returning the harddrive and buying a SATA I drive?

ChrisLX200 · 5 Jan 2009 at 17:32

I don't think you can buy SATA I drives now (new anyway). A jumper is a little cap that plugs into the back of the drive - your's may not have this, only some drives use jumpers. The other way of setting the speed is by changing a setting in the drive's firmware and this is achieved through use of the manufacturers Hard Drive Utility.

[edit: posted wrong link.... hang on]

Right: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=126&orderNum=5

Check if the drive actually has a jumper block (8 pins in a block) first.

Evol · 5 Jan 2009 at 18:25

Ah cheers.

From what you describe my drive doesnt have 8 pins, Only the SATA cable socket, the power socket (which looks like a larger version of the SATA socket) and a square 4 pinned socket with really thin pins...

I am going to try the diskette with the tools on it, is it worth a try or are the chances that my drive is not compatible with this method?

Evol · 5 Jan 2009 at 20:22

This is utter fail, nothing works at all, is my only option to take this POS to a professional?

ChrisLX200 · 5 Jan 2009 at 20:44

I take it you could not patch the drive's firmware to reduce speed to 150? It should work according to Samsung's website... However, if you know someone with a more modern machine (one that will recognise SATA II drives) then they can connect it to their computer to apply the patch. Sorry, but old kit soon goes out of date and support just disappears. You could have used an IDE drive instead of SATA, but there aren't many of those around now - old hardware again, they've been replaced by SATA.

Evol · 6 Jan 2009 at 12:48

I followed the link you provided and extracted both "SSpeed.zip" and "BDM_SpeedSwitch1.zip" onto 2 separate floppys since I wasnt sure which one I was supposed to be using.

The "SSpeed.zip" does not work, the computer will not boot from it giving a message along the lines of "this is not a system disk, replace and hit any key to reboot", while the "BDM_SpeedSwitch1.zip" will infact boot and loads something up, and after typing the command "Run", appears to do nothing.

Does this change settings on the Mobo or something? Since the drive is not recognized or picked up at all I would have assumed that that is what is going on, as there is no drive there to change settings on.

IDE is out of the question as i believe my motherboard does not support it, SATA has always worked in the past but what am I supposed to do if I can no longer get a SATA I drive, while that is all my motherboard supports? Wish I could afford a new mobo etc etc but I cant!

This really sucks, 3 days now and im getting nowhere. If ive tried every possible solution then I dont see how someone with more knowledge than myself could help either... at a lost end here.