Intermittent - BIOS fails to detect SATA drive(s)

[Uncle Bob]

Hello

I'm building a new PC for a friend, something I do fairly often and so I've been round the block a few times but this problem is driving me nuts! So this is why I'm here to see if anyone else has seen anything similar or has any idea what's causing the problem;

OK; here are the system specs;
Motherboard: ASUS P4C800E-Deluxe (PCB Rev 2.0)
Bios: 1016 (Shipped) / 1018 (Lastest Installed)
Processor: 3.2Ghz Northwood P4
PSU: Enermax 485W
Graphics: Asus V9520TD (Nvidia FX5200)
RAM: 2GB (2 x 1GB) Geil PC3200 3-4-4-8
Dual Channel (Slot #1/#3)

Intel ICH5R Controller
IDE Pri Master: IBM IC35L060AVER07-0 (ER60A46A) ** Boot Drive **
UDMA Mode-5
Slave: Maxtor 6Y080P0 (YAR41BW0) ** Boot Drive **
UDMA Mode-5
IDE Sec Master: Sony DVD RW DW-22A (BYS1)
UDMA Mode-4
Slave: Sony DVD-ROM DDU1613 (9YS1)
UDMA Mode-2

Sata (Non-Raid) Drive 0: Maxtor 6B200M0 (BANC19J0)
(Non-Raid) Drive 1: Maxtor 6B200M0 (BANC19J0)

Promise PDC20378 Controller Bios Ver 1.00.0.33
(Non Raid Configuration)
IDE Pri Master: None
Slave: None
Sata Drive 0: Maxtor 6B200M0 (BANC19J0)
Sata Drive 1: None


BIOS Settings at default except;
Onboard LAN - Disabled
Promise Controller - IDE Mode

The problem?
The system boots off one or other of the two PATA drives attached to the primary IDE channel of the ICH5R controller (One of the drives is in a removeable caddy because it runs some software which conflicts with some software which is on the other boot drive).

System was up and running for several days until I started booting Ghost 2003 from floppy to store images of the software load at various stages of the build). I then started to notice that on subsequent boots, the system was failing to detect the two SATA drives attached to the ICH5R controller and the only way to fix the fault was to power-cycle the system.

I initially put this down to the Ghost software screwing something up when it was scanning for hard drives especially as the Ghost would load and immediately crash more often than not. But the same problem has started to happen even from a 'Cold' boot - i.e the machine has been off overnight and Ghost has not been near the machine for several power/reset cycles before that. It doesn't happen every time (3 or 4 times out of 5 are OK) but when it does the drives will normally come back after one power cycle.

The fault started with bios 1016, updating to the latest 1018 bios didn't make any difference. Various attempts at changing bios settings have also been negative. I'd be inclined to blame a bad cable but the fact that both drives disappear tends to make me doubt that.

I'd be grateful for any ideas/thoughts any of you may have

 

[imported_rhfactor]

Your PSU might not be big enough. I know it's a 485W but you have a lot of disk drives in there.

 

[Uncle Bob]

thanks for the reply rhfactor, I understand your thinking (peak startup power requirements) but it's most probably not for two reasons

1) I specced the power requirements of the system and came out at around 400w maximum, plus 20% overhead which I reasoned should be enough when using a quality brand like enermax, antec etc.

2) update:
OK, so for test purposes, I've disconnected the two PATA drives and cabled the two SATA drives to the Promise controller, so I've now only got 2 optical and 2 hard drives on the system total (480w should easily cope, right?).
I also used two new SATA data cables. And, just to add spice to the mix, I set them up as a RAID-0 array. All was OK through a complete install of Windows XP, setting up drivers and apps, and many combinations of reboots and power cycles and then, just now, now drives are not detected on the Promise controller!

So, given that these two drives were the pair that was connected to the ICH5R controller originally, and were giving me problems, it would suggest that one or other (or both) of these drives are faulty?

 

[boomerang]

I'm thinking motherboard. Two bad drives? It's possible I guess. Unfortunately, ruuning a diagnostic on them will probably be inconclusive as it's an intermittent detection problem.

Makes you wish you a spare motherboard for test purposes doesn't it?

 

[imported_rhfactor]

Since this is a new install, have you tried installing without the RAID? What about the power cable? Have you tried switching them? I have the Asus P4P800 deluxe and have no problems with the SATA detection.

 

[boomerang]

What OS are you running on this rig? Page 2-23 and 2-24 of the motherboard manual have some interesting reading regarding running a "Legacy" OS.

The board does not appear to be capable of supporting all the drives you have if you're running anything older than 2000 or XP.

It sounds as if you may be running two different Operating Systems with the removable drive.

 

[Uncle Bob]

update:
I'm setting them up as RAID so I can see instantly when the detection fails (ie XP no longer boots) before if it was a non-booting drive that wasn't being detected, then I had to check explorer after each boot to see if the drive was visible to XP, the fault originally appeared in a non-Raid config, and it was the Intel controller that was giving me problems, hence the move to the Promise controller for testing. Also, I have an AMD system using the promise controller and SATA drives without any problems.

If I number the drives A,B and C, A&B have failed on both the ICH5R and on the Promise, B&C have failed on the Promise, currently A&C are running on the Promise and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they run OK (indicating that drive B is the culprit) 'cause if that fails I don't know what I'm gonna do................ (hope I can exchange a couple of SATA drives for PATA versions I suppose)

Boomerang; XP Pro SP1a is running on both boots and Enhanced mode is enabled in the BIOS (I've tried enhanced SATA and enhanced SATA+PATA but it doesn't make any difference). With regard to SP2, the machine will never be connected to the internet (if fact the o/b lan is disabled) and I know all the apps run perfectly well under SP1a so I don't want to move to SP2 unless there's a compelling reason to.

(BTW its a Video Editing Workstation and will eventually be home to a Matrox RTX.100 card when the system is stable enough for what is reputed to be a very fussy card)

 

[Uncle Bob]

update:
The final pairing has shown the same problem. I've sent an email support request to Maxtor
and I'm going to try a couple of them in my AMD64 system.

Really getting me down now.........

 

[Uncle Bob]

update: I've just received a firmware update from Maxtor, we'll have to see how that goes