Is this the Sata issue with my Asus P67?

EdgeOfDetroit

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2004
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I have an Asus P8P67 Evo, and I'm using 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives, all of them using Sata connections. For the hard drives I used all 4 of my Sata 3.0 ports. For the optical drives, in order to avoid the bugged Sata ports I would have had to stretch the Sata cables outside the case to use the external ports, so I decided since the bug was only supposed to present itself in rare cases to use the 2.0 Sata ports.

Now its a month later or so and over the past few days first one of my dvd drives "disappeared" from showing up in Windows (but the other still worked), and today the other one is gone as well. I just rebooted without effect, to the computer it appears that neither is even plugged in, but they are plugged in.

This seems different than a progressively increasing error rate that Intel described. I burned a DVD just a week ago, and it worked fine. I installed an old program from CD and that worked fine as well. Now in just two days both of my optical drives just vanished from the OS.

I registered with Asus but haven't heard back from them yet. I hope they get back to me soon, I'm not sure that optical drives will even work with the external sata ports, because apparently some sata ports are not designed to work with anything except hard drives.
 
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BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,679
11,023
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You have several SATA ports on that board...

Intel® P67 Express Chipset
2 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports
(gray)
4 xSATA 3.0 Gb/s ports (blue)
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Support RAID 0,1,5,10

Marvell® 9120 controller
2 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (navy blue)*
JMicron® JMB362 SATA controller
2 xExternal SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports*
* These SATA ports are for data hard drives only. ATAPI devices are not supported.

Have you tried the "missing" ODD's in the other ports?
 

EdgeOfDetroit

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2004
21
0
66
You have several SATA ports on that board...



Have you tried the "missing" ODD's in the other ports?

Your post seems to answer my question about whether I can use my optical drives with the external sata ports, and the answer is no. Which makes it strange that you'd ask if I tried to use it with other ports, because your post shows that it wouldn't work. So I think you didn't actually read my post thoroughly and you answered my question accidentally. So thanks, I guess.

As I said I have four hard drives on the Sata3 devices. I haven't tested the optical drives anywhere else because the only unbugged ports left that I can use them with are the Intel sata ports my raided hard drives are using, or ports that aren't supposed to work for optical drives at all.
 

SilentRunning

Golden Member
Aug 8, 2001
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Your post seems to answer my question about whether I can use my optical drives with the external sata ports, and the answer is no. Which makes it strange that you'd ask if I tried to use it with other ports, because your post shows that it wouldn't work. So I think you didn't actually read my post thoroughly and you answered my question accidentally. So thanks, I guess.

As I said I have four hard drives on the Sata3 devices. I haven't tested the optical drives anywhere else because the only unbugged ports left that I can use them with are the Intel sata ports my raided hard drives are using, or ports that aren't supposed to work for optical drives at all.

He showed that you have two available SATA ports on the Marvell controller

Marvell® 9120 controller
2 xSATA 6.0 Gb/s ports (navy blue)*
JMicron® JMB362 SATA controller
2 xExternal SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports*
* These SATA ports are for data hard drives only. ATAPI devices are not supported.

EDIT Nevermind, I missed that the asterisk was attached to both controllers. Thats what I get for posting when half asleep.
 
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Aug 31, 2007
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I have an ASRock Extreme4. I also have 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives. The 2 optical drives are connected to the SATA3 ports (which don't have the bug). Four hard drives are raided on the SATA2 ports. I also had my optical drives disappear. I rebooted and they were still gone. I played around in the bios a little and rebooted and they were back. In my case I don't think it is the bug. Just something strange.
 

Soundmanred

Lifer
Oct 26, 2006
10,784
6
81
When my SATAII ports went out, the drives would appear and disappear during/after reboots and give garbled messages (where it shows what drive is attached during post.)
 

bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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I have an ASRock Extreme4. I also have 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives. The 2 optical drives are connected to the SATA3 ports (which don't have the bug). Four hard drives are raided on the SATA2 ports. I also had my optical drives disappear. I rebooted and they were still gone. I played around in the bios a little and rebooted and they were back. In my case I don't think it is the bug. Just something strange.

Oh no! Not the ASRock too?

You know, some of the ASUS guys had a prob with their SSD's not being recognized. They then RMA'd the mobo's and with the replacement the prob went away. Now this. Just wondering if some of the plastic SATA ports make weak electric contact with the cables.
 

coffeejunkee

Golden Member
Jul 31, 2010
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Well, to me it has all the signs this is caused by the sata issue indeed. Even though Intel is talking about 'progressive degradation over the course of time', it was also mentioned sata ports could stop working all together. Ofcourse I could be wrong and it could be something else, but why not suspect an issue that the manufacturer itself admits is causing problems like this?

But does it really matter what is the cause? You want to exchange your mobo anyway for a B3 version. Or at least I would.
 

EdgeOfDetroit

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2004
21
0
66
Just as a small update, I got the idea to swap which Sata cable my two optical drives were plugged in to with each other. When I powered the computer back up, they both showed back up with a drive letter and working properly. It'll be interesting to see if they go away again.

And for the record, although I registered with Asus I still haven't heard from them regarding replacement of my motherboard. Maybe cause the Evo is a less popular model, I dunno.
 

bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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@coffeejunkie

Can you even read?
The man said he has the DVD's on the SATA3 ports
Furthermore data loss on HDD gradually getting worse has nothing to do with ATAPI losing detection EVEN IF they were on SATA2. The SATA2 ported HDD are going to show probs long before they disappear from view. If the SATA ports themselves are sloppy or sensitive to dif cable brands, then a new mobo aint gonna fix things.

This looks like a contact prob to me, and would explain a lot of things.
 

irse

Member
Oct 3, 2002
186
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@coffeejunkie

Can you even read?
The man said he has the DVD's on the SATA3 ports
Furthermore data loss on HDD gradually getting worse has nothing to do with ATAPI losing detection EVEN IF they were on SATA2. The SATA2 ported HDD are going to show probs long before they disappear from view. If the SATA ports themselves are sloppy or sensitive to dif cable brands, then a new mobo aint gonna fix things.

This looks like a contact prob to me, and would explain a lot of things.

"I'm using 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives, all of them using Sata connections. For the hard drives I used all 4 of my Sata 3.0 ports. For the optical drives, in order to avoid the bugged Sata ports I would have had to stretch the Sata cables outside the case to use the external ports, so I decided since the bug was only supposed to present itself in rare cases to use the 2.0 Sata ports."

According to his post, he's using the SATA 3 ports for the HDDs and the SATA 2 ports for the optical drives"
 
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
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"I'm using 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives, all of them using Sata connections. For the hard drives I used all 4 of my Sata 3.0 ports. For the optical drives, in order to avoid the bugged Sata ports I would have had to stretch the Sata cables outside the case to use the external ports, so I decided since the bug was only supposed to present itself in rare cases to use the 2.0 Sata ports."

According to his post, he's using the SATA 3 ports for the HDDs and the SATA 2 ports for the optical drives"

We seem to be having a communications problem here.
I quoted deathbyburrito2, NOT the OP
But fwiw flakey connectors may still apply anyways.
 
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EdgeOfDetroit

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2004
21
0
66
Just as a small update, I got the idea to swap which Sata cable my two optical drives were plugged in to with each other. When I powered the computer back up, they both showed back up with a drive letter and working properly. It'll be interesting to see if they go away again.

And for the record, although I registered with Asus I still haven't heard from them regarding replacement of my motherboard. Maybe cause the Evo is a less popular model, I dunno.

Well so much for that. The drives are gone again today after my first reboot since yesterday.
 

bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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Well so much for that. The drives are gone again today after my first reboot since yesterday.

Could you please try this in boot tab in bios -
fullscreen logo - disabled
post delay - make 8 seconds

that failing - try dif brand cables, not el cheapo's
 

Diogenes2

Platinum Member
Jul 26, 2001
2,151
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It is doubtfull two flaky cables will show as " no device " for opticals in Windows ..

Out of hundreds of SATA cables over the years, I have never seen a bad one..
 

bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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Its not the cables per se, its how the contacts mate up in the right angle ports.

I seem to have a real problem in this thread making my point, so I hereby give up trying.

I never have any probs with my own stuff for some reason, so the only way I can gain insight is by asking about others problems and suggesting things. I have had success here by advising increasing post time with SSD drives NOT SHOWING probs. However, if there waa a firmware detection issue, then they would not appear - period - not intermittantly.

But hey, not gonna push anything, I thusly submit to your superior knowledge.
 
Aug 31, 2007
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I haven't had a single problem since. Not sure what to blame. I'll be getting a new board soon, so I'll worry about it if it happens after that.
 

EdgeOfDetroit

Junior Member
Jan 13, 2004
21
0
66
Could you please try this in boot tab in bios -
fullscreen logo - disabled
post delay - make 8 seconds

that failing - try dif brand cables, not el cheapo's

The post delay is already set to 10 seconds, I remember changing it that high when doing the setup so I could see the status more easily. I don't see any benefit in shortening it, so I'm not going to change it to 8 seconds. I always have the fullscreen logo disabled, again because I want to see what its telling me at bootup.

I just so happen to be using two different Sata cables for the two different optical drives. They aren't el-cheapos, they are ones that come with high end motherboards. I'm not about to go through my stack of sata cables to test this, I inadvertently tested two different kinds, that's more than sufficient to disprove the flaky connection theory.

Its not the cable just like its not lupus in any given episode of House. Thanks for the idea, but I'm not really even interested in trying all kinds of things to get the drives to work. We have a very good suspicion that its the sata bug. My purpose in making this thread isn't to get diagnostic help, but to find out if anyone else is experiencing something similar and if we can confirm that this is what happens when the sata bug occurs, or if this is something else.