SATA HD Not Detected

[John24]

Just bought my first sata hd, WD 160GB, BIOS and xp is failing to see it.

My mobo is a MSI KM4M-V. BIOS is up to date, SATA is enabled and I tried pluging it into both ports.

Being now to sata not sure if their`s anything I`m missing or if the drive is faulty.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
John

 

[semi-pro waster]

Welcome to the forums, if you've tried swapping cables and are sure that the power supply is plugged into the drive but the drive is still not recognised then you might well have a faulty drive because it sounds like you've checked everything else necessary.

 

[rpstewart]

When you boot the PC does the drive spin up? If you put your hand on the label side of the drive you should be able to feel the platters spin.

You may well have to put a jumper on the drive to force it to run at SATA150 speeds rather than the default SATA300 speed it comes from the factory at. 2 minutes and I'll dig out the jumper positions for WD drives.

EDIT: Bingo! That board needs a jumper set on the drive, the SATA controller is one of those listed on the WD Support Page

 

[John24]

aha, so the first gen sata controllers are unable to support the autospeed negotiation. Setting the jumper to force the 150 mb/s transfer rate enabled xp to see it, though bios still cannot, which really isn`t a problem.

In a way I`m glad by mobo can`t support 300 mb/s because the clicking noise the drive makes while at that setting would do my head in after a while. I`ll have to search out a quieter drive when I finally upgrade my system to modern standards.

Yep, for now I`m happy with this drive, I can see a performance improvement over my pata 80 gig wd, it`s quieter too though a lot hotter to the touch even though it`s perched on a shelf at the side of my box. Hopefully it won`t be so much hotter when installed that I`ll need another case fan to keep it and my system cool.

Thanks for your help rpstewart and for the welcome semi-pro waster, I`ve learned a few things here