Abit IX38 Bios and Hard Drive Detection Issues

[MyLeftNut]

I posted this in motherboard section, thought I should've posted here instead:

I got a wierd problem here. First of all, I got 4 hard drives connected to this motherboard.
1) Seagate 7200.10 320GB (SATA-2)
2) Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB (SATA-1)
3) Western Digital Caviar WD3200JD 320GB (SATA-1)
4) Western Digital Caviar WD3200JD 320GB (SATA-1)

Motherboard bios: latest v13 Abit IX38 bios

Now the issue is that if I clear the CMOS and unplug all power sources to the motherboard and let it sit for like 10 mins, it will detect the seagate hard drive fine. But, if I shutdown and disconnect all power sources to the board, then try to power up again, it won't detect the seagate. The only way I can get it to detect is to power it off disconnected for 10mins and clear CMOS.

This issue doesn't affect my other 3 hard drives, the maxtor and 2 WD's at all. Initially, I thought it might be that there's some problem with detecting SATA-2 drives, but I jumpered the drive to SATA-1 and still the same problem. I've also seen reviews of this same motherboard with the same seagate hard drive that I have, but it could have different firmware revisions on the hard drive (I got the very early release).

Right now, I'm thinking it's the bios that's the problem as the drive has been working on my P5B Deluxe as always. Does anyone have any suggestions or experiences with this kinda problem?

 

[imported_BadBlock]

That is weird.

When you say won't detect it, does it start up and get stuck for a while detecting drives, or does it just boot up at normal speed. Also when you start up and it can't see the drive, if you go in the bios and look at the device list does it show what it normally shows when there is no device connected, or is the entry empty or have nonsense data?

Also if you set the seagate to sata1 as per this illustration to match the others is the behavior still the same?

 

[MyLeftNut]

Originally posted by: BadBlock
That is weird.

When you say won't detect it, does it start up and get stuck for a while detecting drives, or does it just boot up at normal speed. Also when you start up and it can't see the drive, if you go in the bios and look at the device list does it show what it normally shows when there is no device connected, or is the entry empty or have nonsense data?

Also if you set the seagate to sata1 as per this illustration to match the others is the behavior still the same?

The bios menu does not even list the drive when it doesn't detect. As well, at startup, it does indeed get stuck longer at the hard drive detection part. Lets say I plug it into SATA Port 3. Upon detection, it'll go right through ports 1 and 2 knowing that there's nothing there and then get stuck for like 2 mins at port 3. Eventually, it just gives up at trying to detect the drive and no drive is detected.

As for your suggestion, I've tried that and it's still the exact same thing in detection and also gets stuck just as long to eventually not detect. This is why I believe it to be a bios issue as it's only affecting this seagate drive. I just can't think of any reason why it would be a hardware issue with the board or the hard drive. Or perhaps it's the bios on the hard drive and compatibility with the motherboard??? It's been working fine for a year with my P5B Deluxe with never any issues, and it does boot up with the Abit board but only if I clear CMOS and disconnect all power sources, reconnect, and start back up on a clean bios state.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? Maybe someone here that studies computer stuff could answer this for me. Could IRQ issues have any effect on the startup detection by the bios?

 

[MyLeftNut]

Another thing I forgot to mention is that there's 3 primary partitions on that seagate drive which contains the boot partition and another system partition. Here's the setup:

Partition [C:] - Windows Vista x64
Partition [D:] - Windows XP
Partition [E:] - Primary Partition (storage)

Similarly, the other hard drives also have 3 primary partitions, but non containing OS's. Would this have any effect on bios hard drive detection?

 

[imported_BadBlock]

There shouldn't be anything you could write to the drive during normal use that would cause it to be undetectable by the bios. When booting it needs to read the "system area" of the disk to discover its attributes and load part of the firmware, but this is in a negative sector area and you can't write to it without trying.

Did any change precede this problem, did you add any new drives or change motherboards or bios versions recently? Or move it between machines and possibly zap the drive with static? Normally if I thought the drive was good and it wasn't being detected in a particular machine I would suspect the motherboard bios first.

Sometimes the firmware on a drive can become corrupted though what you describe is still strange. I would back up any data considered important in case the drive is flaking out and you need to send it in for warranty replacement.

Out of curiosity have you tried doing the short or long test with the seagate diagnostic tools (the dos boot cd, not the windows program).

 

[MyLeftNut]

What I did was I changed motherboards. I was using a P5B Deluxe previously, so I moved all the hard drives over along with the rest of the hardware to the new Abit IX38. I really don't think there's anything wrong with the drive itself though as I'm using it now and if I shutdown or restart, it's fine and still being detected.

Only when I shutdown and switch off the powersupply to cutoff power to the machine does the detection issue reoccur again. I will definitely try out that seage diagnostic tool you suggested. Thanks

Update 1: So far, using dos seatools, the short test shows up fine. Will do long test tomorrow and report back.

 

[imported_BadBlock]

Have you tried using a different mb bios (possibly one version earlier)?

Also do you have any bus speed related values, including agp and pci, set to anything other than auto?

 

[MyLeftNut]

Yes, I've tried using v12 bios which was on the board when I got it. That was where I encountered the issue so I flashed it to v13 bios which is the current and latest.

As for the pci-e frequency, the original speed is at 100, but the problem still exists at that frenquency if I shutdown and flip off the psu switch. I have it at 110 at the moment which doesn't affect the issue negatively or positively. I haven't tried lowering the speed below 100 though. Perhaps I should try that later. I've had my Asus P5B Deluxe at pci-e speeds between 95-118 before with no problems whatsoever with this seagate though.