SATA Controller Problems

[imported_Dignan17]

Here's my issue.

I have an ASUS A7N8X mobo. Attached were an 80GB PATA drive (for the OS), and a 250GB SATA drive (for files). I wanted more storage, and bought two 300GB SATA drives. The problem is that my mobo has two SATA connections on it, so I needed more.

So I bought an inexpensive Syba card. Probably not a great card, but I'm not doing RAID or running anything too intensive through it. Just storing files. It has two ports on it.

The problem is this. I can have one, two, or no drives connected to my motherboard and I boot fine. The moment any drive whatsoever is attached to the Syba card, my machine doesn't boot past the drive check for the two controllers. It will indeed check both controllers, and accurately report any drive configuration I hook up to it, but if there is any drive attached to the card, that's where the boot process stops.

Naturally, I'm eager to add another 300GB to my system. I currently have only added one drive, and another is sitting useless on my desk.

I implore you good people. Do you have any ideas?

 

[Severian]

my guess is a BIOS setting needs to be adjusted, telling the board not to try to boot from the Syba card.

I've used add-in HDD cards before, and there's always an adjustment that needs to be made before everything is happy.....

 

[imported_Dignan17]

I've looked everywhere I can in the BIOS, but I don't see anything that would indicate that the machine is trying to boot to the card. Does anyone else have an A7N8X that can check this for me? I can't see anything...

 

[Severian]

check in the boot menu, see if there's a sub-menu that lets you select the hard drive order, you may be able to remove the card from the menu, and also, check to see if "boot other device" is disabled.

 

[imported_Dignan17]

Thank you so much for the responses, folks. I really appreciate them.

I just got home, and once more I've looked as much as I can through the BIOS and can't find anything that would even be related to the controller card or any menu that would even be related to PCI devices. In fact, what's been confusing me is that I don't even see a mention of the onboard SATA contoller. I imagine there must be some way to disable that if you didn't have drives connected and didn't want it checking every time you booted your machine. But no, I can't see any mention of it. Argh!

I did see "boot other device." I had disabled it on an earlier run-through of the BIOS...

 

[Severian]

you checked boot order? see if RAID or other device shows up there.

the onboard SATA controller settings are usually in Integrated Peripherals or OnChip PCI device...

 

[imported_Dignan17]

Yeah, the boot order is listed right about "boot other device." The usual options are there (HDD 0, floppy, CDROM, etc). It should be HDD 0, I imagine.

I looked in integrated peripherals, but couldn't see anything that mentioned the SATA controller. I was able to find my manual, and it doesn't even mention SATA in the BIOS section. Pretty much all it says is that it can be enabled or disabled by a jumper. I suppose if it comes to it, I'll just get a 4 channel SATA card, disable the onboard controllers, and see if the system will boot if there's only one controller/BIOS loading...