Fried HD's?

[Frostyrootbeer]

Hello,
I'm building a new system and have been having problems with my HD (2 250GB WD SATA's). I'm not sure if I accidently fried them somehow, or If my mobo is just being finicky. My Bios Recognizes the hd's, but either locks up halfway through boot, or somehow hides them from windows setup. I have tried switching Sata Cables, ports and running each drive seperatly to no avail. I find it hard to believe that both drives are malfunctioning/fried, but this is possible (i can be pretty stupid some times). My new systems specs are as follows:
Asus A8N Sli Premium
Athlon X2 4400+
Antec 2.0 500W Powersupply
Geforce 7800 GTX
Audigy Zs
Liteon Dvd Burner

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[Jiggz]

Are you trying to setup the 2 hdd in a RAID Array? If you are you need to load the driver for the RAID controller. If you are not setting up a RAID Array, then try connecting the hdd one at a time and see if one or both is fried. If these are new drives they might need partitioning and formatting first. If none of them will work still, download a utitlity fromm the maker and then diagnose both. Better yet zero both of them.

 

[Frostyrootbeer]

Thanks for the reply,
I am not trying to use a Raid array, I want them to work individually. They are brand new HD's, connecting one at a time yields the same result. How do I use the utility if I don't have an OS installed? Thanks

 

[CrispyFried]

Anything overclocked on your setup?

In the BIOS you can try manually setting dma mode down to udma 4 or 5 instead of 6 just to see if anything changes.

 

[Frostyrootbeer]

I don't have anything overclocked, i literally just installed everything and had this problem on the first boot up.

 

[Frostyrootbeer]

I called asus, and they said that it might be a problem with my ram. This seems unlikely as it is recognized in bios, and the computer boots fine when i remove the drives.

 

[0roo0roo]

test drives in another computer or external usb enclosure
it is unlikely they are both fried. or broken. dead dying drives tend to make a racket

 

[Frostyrootbeer]

I have a new development. I ran both drives of the RAID slots just to see what would happen, then switched them back to regular sata and i can now get into windows setup (before it just hung and locked up). My problem now is that windows still won't recognize the drives. I'm going to try to find the sata drivers for the A8N and cannabalize a floppy from another computer. Hopefully if i can load those windows will recognize it.

 

[Jiggz]

I'm quite sure as soon as you install the SATA drivers you'll be smooth sailing.

 

[Nocturnal]

What SATA ports are you using on your motherboard? There are the nVidia SATA ports and then the other ones that require a driver. You shouldn't have to install a driver if you connect them to your nVidia SATA ports which I believe are the red ones.

 

[Frostyrootbeer]

Strange,
I switched from the red RAID ports back to the regular sata ports, and now windows recognizes my hard drives (in device manager). The only problem is that all i can see in my computer is C drive, and it shows up as only having 127GB instead of 250. I haven't installed the drivers yet, would doing so correct this problem (and allow me to access the second drive)?