SATA drive not detected by BIOS

I am posting this pre-solved puzzle to hopefully avoid anyone else wasting time like I did ;-)

Motherboard: Asus A7V600-X
Hard drive: ST3200827AS, 200 GB, 7200 rpm, SATA 3Gb/s - http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,721,00.html

When you stick the above hard-drive into the above motherboard you get... nothing. It's not detected - and no amount of wire checking will make any difference. Even if you have the latest BIOS available at the time of writing - which is Revision 1009

The problem is SATA2 - if there is such a thing - maybe call it SATA 3Gb/s. The Asus A7V600-X only supports SATA 1.5Gb/s (ie the original SATA) and therefore cannot detect this hard drive. So much for backward compatibility...who exactly is at fault here, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing the motherboard.

The solution requires a jumper. Yes, and you thought jumpers weren't needed for SATA drives -think again! ;-)
In order to allow the Asus A7V600-X to recognise this Seagate disk, I had to put a jumper on the outer-most pins of the jumper block as illustrated here: http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/sata_lock.html

It didn't help that on the drive itself, this same jumper block is labelled with the words Factory Use Only in big letters. In fact, I'm quite miffed about this, because one of my last-effort guesses was to stick a jumper in here and see what happens - but I didn't bother when I saw that message. It was clear to me that I was not meant to fiddle with it - but as it turned out, I was.

So if you've just upgraded your Asus motherboard with a big, fat Seagate hard drive and the BIOS doesn't recognise it - try this. It worked for me and everything was fine. I had no problems with Windows detecting it because I'd already gone to the trouble of updating the VIA drivers before purchasing the drive.

Interestingly, in the situation where you haven't yet put the jumper on the drive, and the BIOS doesn't yet know anything about your new drive, WindowsXP still pauses when booting for about 10 seconds at the DOS-like WindowsXP loading screen... and the Via RAID controller gives an error 10 (in Device Manager). This might lead you to believe that something is almost working but it's not.

Until the BIOS says: Serial_Ch0 master ST3200827AS - don't bother trying anything else.
That is, as opposed to saying: Serial_Ch0 master No Device, Serial_Ch1 master No Device.

 

Samsung SATA II drives have it clearly labeled and include a jumper and a little instruction sheet with their drives, but some of the older motherboards won't accept SATA II even if jumpered for 150. Guess it pays to check things out but most of us still learn things the hard way.

 

Thanks yeah, part of the problem I imagine a lot of people will have is that neither the drive nor the motherboard say anything about SATA1 or SATA2. And the hard drive specs don't mention it either. So for example, what is there about that Seagate drive spec URL I gave and my motherboard manual (which proudly professes SATA compability), would alert you to the fact it won't work? A reasonable person having done reasonable research would conclude it wouldn't be a problem. Hence my post which I hope clarifies what took me a while to figure out ;-) The only clue is that the interface is specificed as SATA 3Gb/s - hardly sufficient notice to the fact that this SATA drive may not work on my SATA compatible motherboard I reckon...

 

Interesting, Seagate even have the following point as one of the Key Features of this drive:

Backward compatible with SATA 1.5Gb/s hosts... hmmmm, if you log onto the website and happen to know that your host is only SATA 1.5Gb (it might just say SATA compatible) and you then find a spare jumper to put on the jumper pins of the drive that are labeled Factory Use Only, then it's backwards compatible ;-)

 

SATA jumpers

I am seeing the opposite results. I just built a PC using a MSI K8N Neo4-F motherboard with a Seagate SATA2 ST3808110AS hard drive. I was aware of the fact that the motherboard supported only SATA 150mb and the hard drive would have to jumpered to limit it to SATA 150mb when I purchased them. I expected the hard drive to have a jumper included, which it did not. The motherboard manual makes it very clear that the SATA connectors support only '1st generation serial ATA data rates of 150MB/s'. Not having a jumper on hand, I went ahead and connected the hard drive without a jumper. This worked, no errors, and it seemed to be very fast. I was so impressed that I ordered a second hard drive just like the first for backups. Both SATA drives are installed with no jumpers and working great. I am not smart enough to figure out why it works for me, but it works.
Thank you for reminding me that I should locate 2 of those jumpers and get the drives jumpered correctly.

Gordon

Edit; I just found something in the Seagate installation guide that may explain the difference we are seeing concerning the speed jumper. It says that if your motherboard chipset does not support SATA speed autonegotiation or SATA 3mb, then you will need to add the jumper. I was not aware that there was such a thing as SATA speed autonegotiation, so I have learned something new today.

 

Ah thanks for that, yes ultimately, I'm happy that I'm much more knowledgeable about installing a SATA drive now! ;-) So I suppose my motherboard just doesn't have the speed autonegotiation capability, and it probably should. I guess also, that this problem should disappear as we move into 6Gb/s - presumably, all the implementors of SATA will know about autonegotiation and the possibility of later SATA versions and will always cater for higher throughput. And this SATA1 vs SATA2 was just a one-time hiccup.

 

It's been a few years since I built a computer, and I always have to relearn everything... but I've been having a similar problem.

I purchased these...
http://www.microcenter.com/byos/byos_single_product_results.phtml?product_id=233419
http://www.microcenter.com/byos/byos_single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0213526

I started this thread http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=56205 before I saw this one(I did a search. )... But basically I've reformatted the drive several times, including with the Data LIfeguard tools like the instructions for the drive say, but it windows says that there is no hard drive when attempt to install it. I don't know if has something to do with the bios, the jumper, or the tools I've used to format it.

I had to download the DLT here
http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=1&swid=30

 

Oftheborg,
Your product mix is just the opposite. We were talking about adding a jumper to a second generation SATA hard drive to make it function like a first generation drive, while you are attempting to connect SATA first generation hard drives to a MB that supports SATA second generation. I would recommend that you send an e-mail to the technical support site for your motherboard and ask if those SATA first generation hard drives will work on that motherboard. I don't know and it sounds like you have attempted everything else.

Gordon

 

Thanks A Lot!!!

I had exactly same problem with my Seagate HDD and my Asus motherboard but when I put jumpers on my HDD started to work!

Thanks for great advices!

 

Well, two weeks to late for me, I have had exactly this problem with exactly this Motherboard ASUS A7V600-X with a 80 Gig Seagate SATA drive , but I did not find the fix and from Memory I did post here as well, what's more I had taken it back to the Computer Shop where I purchased it and asked them about the compatibility of the drive with this mobo and the answer was" YES" it is backward compatible. In the end I managed to talk them into swapping it for a good old PATA drive. Which was not what I wanted in the first place.
Thank you for pointing this out to us I am sure it will help avoid many a frustrating episode. Not very smart from Seagate.
hawk22

 

Yes I did post here.

Question

How should I set A7V600-X priority of boot from SATA HDD?

Answer

Please enter BIOS setup, locate Boot ->Other Boot Device, set to [SCSI/onboard ATA Boot Device]. Then, press <+> to move the device up the list and save & exit BIOS.

As we know now there was no way it could work.

This again has shown to me just how much we can learn here on the BBS

hawk22