SATA problem on 939 Mobo.

[JackMDS]

I have a computer based on Abit K8N 939 Motherboard.

I am using it fro a special project and need it running.

It is loaded with IDE Drive and 2 SATA Drive.

Few days ago the Motherboard stop recognizing the SATA drives, it recognizing and boots from the IDE Drive. The SATA on this Mobo works on IDE mode.

I did a CMOS Reset and reconfigured it, checked all the cables, disconnected all the peripheral that are not important for basic boot.

Nada, at Boot the SATA drives are not detected and the computer does Not boot from them. The SATA on this Mobo works on IDE mode.

Any thoughts?

 

[Saffron]

Try booting from the IDE drive, then go into the Windows Drive Management (right click "my computer" then click "manage" and go into the drive management) and see if the SATA drives are detected there. If they are then initialize them(if need be) and clone the IDE hard drive to one of the SATA drive and try booting from it. If they aren't detected then you may be screwed.

Another thing is search Abit for the SATA drivers, put them on a USB Flash drive and when you go to install windows on the SATA drives it will ask for the drivers. Just point windows to the USB drive and hopefully it will work.

 

[JackMDS]

Thanks Saffron for your response.

When the computer Boots the SATA Drive do not appear in the chipset Boot screen neither they appear as a choice if I press Esc to invoke the Boot choice menu.

I.e., The SATA Drives are Not recognized as an hardware entity before Win 7 gets into the play.

My best guess is that something happened on a Chipset level to the SATA part of the Mobo.
However, I never had such an occurrence and I don't know if such speculation make sense since everything else works well if I boot using IDE drive.

 

[Vectronic]

This should be ruled out by the CMOS reset, but... have you tried playing with any of the Fast/Quick boot settings, changing them back to Standard/Normal?

If your BIOS has a time-out setting for detecting peripherals (usually only HDDs), try increasing that.

Presumably the SATA drives are still powering on/spinning up right?

 

[VirtualLarry]

My best guess is that something happened on a Chipset level to the SATA part of the Mobo.
However, I never had such an occurrence and I don't know if such speculation make sense since everything else works well if I boot using IDE drive.

At first glance, that does seem like a likely possibility. Sometimes, on some boards, things like the onboard ethernet, or the onboard sound, flake out or die. It can just happen. That may be the case here.

I recommend getting a Syba Silicon Image 3114-based PCI 4-port SATA 1.5Gbit/sec controller card from Newegg for $20-30. It will give you four SATA ports, with an onboard BIOS. Don't forget to go to siliconimage.com, and download the newest RAID or IDE BIOS for the card and flash it too.

 

[eBauer]

Did your try connecting a third SATA Device (CD-ROM / HD) to see if it even shows up in the CMOS?

Edit: second thought, make sure you turn off Raid - I had a Gigabyte 939 board that whenever the CMOS reset it would enable the nvidia raid and hence the SATA drives would not be listed.

 

[JackMDS]

Hi Guys.

I tried everything suggested above and it is No go.

The only thing left is Larry's add-on SATA board solution.

I need a board that works well and has 2-3 internal None - RAID independent SATA ports.

Reading the reviews on these products on NewEgg leaves a bad taste.

Should I get a PCIx board that can do SATA II, or the 4 ports board that Larry mentioned?

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Syba%20SATA-4P

This is the card I was speaking of. I own two of them. I think that they work OK. (Performance is not as good as PCI-E controller card, obviously, but it's workable.)

It's only SATA 1.5Gbit/sec, but it's 4 ports.

Plus, it's fairly cheap.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Re-install the bios. Done

 

[Plimogz]

^

I second that. It's worth a shot as I can't think of anything else I did that might've fixed my NF4 939 board's wonky BIOS resetting issue. And yet, it now works fine!