serial ata loose connection?

[ryooki]

I'm running a WinXP system, P4, with a serial ATA drive as my only hard drive. Everything runs fine, sometimes. Occasionally, I'd get a "No Operating System found" error on boot up. Apparently, the bios is not seeing the harddrive sometimes. I reboot, and then everything pops back up to normal. I don't know what's going on. I have a Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9 HD & Gigabyte MB.

It seems that the cable is kind of loose, but I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to be. I tried the other cable that came with my mb to no avail. Still having intermittent harddrive missing problems. Once, when I booted up, Windows found a new IDE hardware, mouse, etc... I've tried to reformat/reinstall Windows, and the problems are getting worse.

Is the Serial ATA cable supposed to snap into place? Does the connection normally feel loose?

Thanks for any info

 

[HiTek21]

I have 2 ATA133 hdds converted in to SATA HDDs with Highpoint Rocket Heads and the cables I have seem to snap into the connectors. Mine seem to be in snugly, you have to jiggle and tug the cable before it comes out.

 

[ryooki]

so it's not ever loose feeling? I kinda have to "snap" it into place, but it's by no means tight after the initial snap. Now that computer is crashing intermittently (sigh).

Thanks for the info...

 

[RalfHutter]

I had a Seagate SATA drive to go with my SATA Intel board and the connections at both places did seem loose. After you plugged the connector in it would still move around. The cables are pretty stiff too, so they put a lot of pressure on the connectors. The whole setup seems like it isn't too well thought out.

I ditched my SATA drive anyway. It's performance was barely better than a PATA drive and it ran 3-4°C hotter than the comparable PATA model of the same drive.

 

[Shagga]

NM sorry should have thought about it before asking a daft question....

😉