Old mobo can't see new SATA drive

[imported_kieran]

I have a pretty old socket-A motherboard ... 2003 I think is when I got it. It's an nForce2 based board, Gigabyte model GA-7N400 Pro. It's still going strong and I have no desire to upgrade at this time. It's maxed out on memory and cpu.

I've been using a 250 GB Maxtor SATA drive on it for several years now, with no problems. Well, the only problem is that it's full.

So the other day I ordered a 1TB Hitachi SATA drive. I wanted to just add it to the system as a second drive, not as a primary drive (I'd like to keep my 250GB drive as the main system drive).

The mobo can (on paper anyway) handle two SATA drives, in either a RAID configuration or a standard ATA configuration.

The problem comes when I install the new drive on port SATA1 (SATA0 is the 250G drive)... the main BIOS posts fine, then the SATA controller bios comes up... it recognizes both drives, but hangs on the second drive. I can't enter the SATA controller bios setup, either... it just hangs.

Take the new drive out of the loop, and system boots fine again.

Any ideas? I don't want a RAID configuration... just standard.

Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

It is possible that your BIOS can't handle 1TB. In 2003 they hadn't been invented yet. If you can, try a smaller 2nd SATA drive.

 

[Xordae]

I was in exactly the same situation a year ago, when my new SATA2 drives arrived for an old Mobo.

You can usually jumper your HD differently. In this case you want to jumper it so it slows down to a speed that enables old SATA1 controllers to recognize it.
How you do that should either be in the manual, or on the sticker directly on the HD, or to be found on the internet.

If you don't know what a jumper is.. that is a tiny piece of metal with plastic around it, used to connect two pins that are not by default connected. You apply it to the back of the harddrive where the other connections are, in a certain spot depending on what you wanna do.