Vanilla P5B Bios help needed - SATA drives not recognized

[gdtymze]

I have the following

P5B (vanilla) mobo
2 gigs of GEIL PC 4200 dual channel RAM
ATI Radeon X1600
2 SEAGATE HDD (320 gigs each)
2 LG DVD ROMs
NO FLOPPY DRIVE
450 W power supply

Problem: Everything was working fine. I tried to add 2 gigs of OCZ RAM. When I installed the ram the monitor would not post (would not power up - no signal). So I did some research and read that if you remove the battery for the bios and reset the bios then install the RAM things should be recognized and work fine. WRONG. I tried that and the monitor still would not post. To make matters worse my MOBO is not recognizing the SATA drives (the worked fine before but not now). The bios is now the 0806 bios and as I said the bios is not recognizing the SATA drives. Any input on how to get the drives recognized would be appreciated. One thing to note is that all other things are working and ID'ed in the bios and when I boot ubuntu from the DVD rom graphics and sound all work. Still the SATA drives are not working. Any and I mean ANY input would be appreciated.

Michael

 

[o1die]

I'd check the bios settings again. Make sure both raid and sata are enabled, even if you don't use raid. I load both the raid driver and the sata driver. I would also try changing the drive jumpers and use only one at a time. If using cable select, try master instead. And finally, check your power supply and sata cable lead going to the drives. You may have knocked them loose when installing the ram.

 

[gdtymze]

Thanks for the reply o1die,

I checked the bios and enabled SATA in the main page as well as the Jmicron settings. Still no good. I also checked to make sure the drives are spinning and they are. I just cant get the mobo to recognize the drives. its like its all there but working and doing what it is supposed to be doing but for some reason it wont recognize the HDD's. I also checked the connectors in case I moved them around when I inserted and removed the extra 2 gigs of ram. Still no good. I think I'll try to upgrade the bios to the latest via USB and see how that works, what do you think?. I'm wide open for input.

 

[o1die]

Any clicking noises coming from the drives? I tried to install a new seagate sata II recently, and halfway through the windows install the drive failed; it made a distinct clicking noise, and I knew it was toast.

 

[gdtymze]

No clicking. Everything is spinning as it should. The only thing I can think of is the bios. Everything is enabled (default settings) and because I can boot up with Ubuntu I know that the audio/video cards work as well as the processors and RAM. Temps are good too. The SATA drives are spinning and working. The mobo just doesn't see them.

 

[gdtymze]

Well o1die,

I feel a little silly. I went back into my system, checked all cables leading to the SATA drives and low and behold the darn thing booted clean! The simplest answer is usually the right answer. Thanks for your time and effort. That said any suggestions on getting my mobo to recognize the additional 2 gigs of ram? I'm going to try increasing the memory votltage and see if that helps. What do you think?

Thanks again,

Michael