Urgent Advice needed!!

[AaronBekir]

Right guys, got a nice big problem! My HDD failed this morning on my pc, so went out to go get a new one. Got a 320gb one from CEX, got it home, only then realised its SATA, never mind i thought, its for my new pc so the motherboard has sata ports. ive plugged it all in, but my vista cd wont detect it. neither will my bios. the mother board is an ASROCK 4 core dual sata2.

having never used sata before, i have no idea where to being.

ive worked out i dont need RAID, from what ive read in the manual, but past that im hopeless!!

all help is appreciated!!

Thanks

aaron

[Matt]

Make sure RAID is off in the BIOS. They'll be an option to treat RAID/SATA like IDE, I can't remember. Basically, mess around in the BIOS until it sees the HDD (may take a reboot). Until it's seen there you can't do anything, obviously.

If after that, it's seen in the BIOS but not by the Vista CD, then it's a weird issue I've only encountered once. Basically, I had to put the HDD in another PC, install the OS on it there, put it back in the first PC, and only then would my boot disc see it - at which point it kindly formatted it again and installed! It was a strange one that....

It's most likely a BIOS setting, or possibly a bad HDD.

[Matt]

Oh, that'll be ?11 for the tech support

[AaronBekir]

lol, in the bios ive set it to non raid, but still nothing. one thing that did pop up, when i put a jumper on it, it asked me to make a boot disk, i dont have a floppy drive on the pc though? so what can i do?

ta

[Matt]

A jumper on the mobo? That shouldn't make any difference. Not sure why it asked you to make a boot disc at that stage. You can make a CD boot disc if need be, but it should boot from the Vista CD. Sorry, got a bit confused with the jumper.

Looking at your mobo's manual online, there's no jumper of importance. There is a CMOS reset jumper, but leave that alone. There are jumpers for the PS2 wakeup, but again, not important here. Are you talking HDD jumpers? Maybe for 32gig or something?

http://www.asrock.com/manual/4CoreDual-SATA2.pdf

Read Section 2.11 onwards. 2.17 seems the most relevant section.

Let's start with the blatantly obvious, but it never hurts as we've all done it before Double check that both the SATA data cable and SATA or MOLEX power cable are plugged in to the HDD. A SATA HDD may take either SATA power or MOLEX power or both - if it has both adaptors, only plug in one (I'd go SATA power myself, just because it's tidier). Trace the power back to the PSU, and make sure the SATA data cable is plugged in to SATA 1 on the mobo.

If that doesn't work, try a different power plug (assuming you have a spare coming off the PSU) and a different SATA data cable in SATA 2 on the mobo.

[AaronBekir]

ok, this is what ive done so far.

ive just plugged the new sata hdd in using the 2 cables that came with my mobo. one is a power converter one, the other is data. the hdd isnt found in the bios. the jumpers i was talking about was on the hdd to limit the data transfer rate, but this didnt do anything. i have installed the latest drivers of my mobo onto the old windows, that still semi works. and have also reflashed the mobo using their own program. still nothing.

it is however, when i boot with just the new hdd and nothing else, asking to make a sata boot disk on a floppy drive. i dont ahve one though! and when i try to reinstall vista, and i can load driver, a raid one comes up, but doesnt do anything!

i have changed every setting in the bios that i can see, but it wont see anything. i have also tried reversing the cables, changing the power one, but nothing. so i have no idea!!

any other help, muchly appreciated.

Aaron

[Dazzyman]

Change the boot sequence on your bios to dvd drive first then HDD instead of the other way around as thats whats probably tripping it up. If your old HDD is still in and detected that will also be the main drive so their will be an option in bios to swap those around and have the new HDD as your second boot device so you can write the OS onto it. Its something thats happened on mine before as I was so used to using boot discs but Vista and xp dont need em. If it works the drive will give an option to press a key to install.

Only jumpers on HDD what would be of importance or whether its a slave or master but it wont make a difference for detection in bios it will either show it if its working or it wont.

Edit
Just read your manual -
Check boot screen in bios if its listed its working if not its not being detected. It also want a specific jumper setting depending on your model what you might need to match. The driver setup disc is only needed if XP/Vista doesnt have it on its database on install (and then it wouldnt find it in dos only not BIOS) so its always a good idea to create it once then leave it in its drive but that wont affect it being found in BIOS it either registers off the motherboard or it doesnt.

You also want to look in your bios though for enabling SATA as some boards by default disable it and thats why its not found it.

[AaronBekir]

ive tried it with just the new sata hdd and the dvd drive enabled, with nothing else plugged in. but will try swapping anyway. keep the ideas coming, as ill try them all at home, im at work at the mo!!

[Matt]

Only jumpers on HDD what would be of importance or whether its a slave or master but it wont make a difference for detection in bios it will either show it if its working or it wont.

SATA drives don't have jumpers for slave/master.

I'm inclined to think the HDD is buggered. It shouldn't be this complicated to get it working.

[Dazzyman]

For that Im on about IDE incase its causing a conflict if hes trying to use it at same time. As I put after it it should either work or it shouldnt for SATA on its own.

He also needs to check on what speed his Sata drive is as certain SATA models have jumper switches on em to change the speed and it might need matching for the board if it spits its dummy out and doesnt like Sata 3gig but as the board says its Sata 2 compatible that shouldnt be an issue. My main worry is if he has hotswapped with power on though as they can screw up some drives even though their "susposed" to be compatible. If not its either the power cable connecting, the sata cable what are faulty or its a DOA drive.

[AaronBekir]

thanks all, i havnt hot swapped it as i wasnt sure if it would work. im going to try changing the boot sequence with only the new hdd and dvd drive on. with both the jumpers off and on (to limit the speed) and if that doesnt work, cex said they would swap it for an IDE one. i reckon the hdd is screwed as well, as it definately shouldnt be that hard!!!

[Matt]

For that Im on about IDE incase its causing a conflict if hes trying to use it at same time. As I put after it it should either work or it shouldnt for SATA on its own.

He also needs to check on what speed his Sata drive is as certain SATA models have jumper switches on em to change the speed and it might need matching for the board if it spits its dummy out and doesnt like Sata 3gig but as the board says its Sata 2 compatible that shouldnt be an issue. My main worry is if he has hotswapped with power on though as they can screw up some drives even though their "susposed" to be compatible. If not its either the power cable connecting, the sata cable what are faulty or its a DOA drive.

There was some info in the PDF manual about jumper settings for different drive manufacturers actually. Aaron check that out!

[AaronBekir]

yeah i looked at that, but it doesnt detail segate. so checked their website, and have tried everything. and nothing has worked! the killer for me is the drive isnt even spinning. surely it should be doing something!! gonna go change it 2moro.

aaron

[Zaki]

Asrock mobos are crap fella. I've not had anything but problems with them. I learnt the hard way, twice!

[Matt]

Any more news?