HDD not detected

[dbonniwell]

I just intalled a new motherboard D975XBX2 and it cannot detect the HDDs
I connected the DVD master and CD slave drives to the one IDE connector I have on the board.
I bought an IDE controler board for the two IDE Hard drives I have. One is a 40gig Western Digital (Original) Master
250gig Seagate (Just bought 1 month ago) Slave
I checked the controller card and it is seated properly in one of two PCI slots and the IDE cable to primary on the card is properly attached.
At the HDDs I rechecked the master and slave settings twice and they are ok
I have the ribbon cable end connector on Mater and the middle connector on slave, power is also connected properly.
Other things
1 The 40gig HDD still has Win XP on it
2 I put the CD in for the drivers on the IDE controler card and does not install.
3 I simple cannot find Auto detect in Bios it should be in Advanced but it is not there.
4 When it goes through its self examination a message comes up that the HDD is not detected.
I tried to reinstall Xp but it gets to a point where it is telling me that the HDD cannot be found
I am not sure where to take this can anyone please help
thanks

[alex666]

Do you see the bios for that controller on your screen when your system is booting? It sounds like it, as you mentioned "self-examination". So I guess the next question is how you have your jumpers set on your hdds. I'd suggest attaching one drive at a time and playing with the jumper settings until that drive is detected, and then adding the second drive. You may want to try cable select rather than master and slave. Also, what type of controller card, a promise? You might want to disconnect all your other drives (the opticals) until you can sort this out. Simple is better when trouble-shooting. Finally, until the hdds are detected on the add-in card, you won't be able to install anything on the hdds (pretty obvious I guess!!). Good luck.

marty

[ski]

Go into BIOS, select SCSI as the first boot device, and save the change.

[alex666]

Go into BIOS, select SCSI as the first boot device, and save the change.

But if he is getting a message stating that the hdds attached to that controller card are not being detected, then boot order is not relevant, at least for the moment. First and foremost, the hdds attached to the pci controller card must be detected. Once they are, then yes, select scsi (or add in card if that's an option) as the first boot device.

[ski]

alex,
You're exactly right. I got one step ahead.


dbonniwell,
The controller card should have its own BIOS. If so, then it will contain the HD configuration data.
Check the card's instructions on how to access its BIOS if it does not automatically appear during startup.

[kiosk]

Wait a minute, if I understood this correctly, both the mainboard ATA controller and the PCI ATA controller card are acting as "primary" controllers? If that's the case, it's a big no-no. The PCI card could be factory-configured to run as a tertiary controller; this mode isn't natively supported by the BIOS (so obviously you wouldn't be able to autodetect drives connected to this device).

[alex666]

Wait a minute, if I understood this correctly, both the mainboard ATA controller and the PCI ATA controller card are acting as "primary" controllers? If that's the case, it's a big no-no. The PCI card could be factory-configured to run as a tertiary controller; this mode isn't natively supported by the BIOS (so obviously you wouldn't be able to autodetect drives connected to this device).

Not sure what you mean re. "factory configured to run as a tertiary controller". On this mobo, there is only one ide channel, so the pci card controller likely will be a secondary controller. Also, you are not really correct that the mobo bios does not natively support it, because the mobo likely has some manner of a bios setting to read scsi and other storage controller cards so that you can expand your storage options.

However, I decided to check my thinking. I'm sitting around today waiting for a MD appt as I'm sick as a dog. So while I'm waiting, I installed an old promise ata controller card into my soltek k8t-939 system. First I just installed it with no hdd attached, and during the post process I got the bios message from the on-board promise controller as it went through the process of detecting a hdd. Since none was attached, it did not detect any and reported this accordingly. In my mobo bios, there were no changes anywhere.

Then I attached a storage ide hdd I keep around, an old 80 gig maxtor. This time, during the post process, I got the bios message detecting, then it detected the maxtor. I went into my bios, and then into "Hard Disk Priority". Usually my two regular hdds are listed there plus a third "add-in" controller option. This time, those were all there PLUS the specific maxtor hdd I had attached to the promise controller.

BTW, I noticed the ide jumpers on the hdd were set to "Master".

This was an interesting exercise in that (1) I determined the old promise controller still works (hooray), and (2) I've never used an add-in controller on this mobo before, and so now I see how it would work and the changes it produces in the bios.

So again, first and foremost, the pci ata controller card must detect those hdds. Once that it accomplished, then you must configure your mobo bios so that it reads that controller card and the hdds attached to the card. In my case, under "Hard Disk Priority", I could have easily selected the maxtor drive attached to the promise controller and booted it if it was an active bootable drive (which it is not, it's only a storage drive).

I hope that helps.

marty

PS: Now I'm off to the MD appt and hoping I can get some good cough syrup so I can sleep!!

[Paul Komski]

There is no given in the way controller cards play with the BIOS they are sitting on - particularly if you are mixing IDE drives on a PCI card with others on the mobo's host controllers. Sometimes disabling the built-in host controller in the main BIOS setup may be required if there is any conflict and the priority is to utilise the drives on the card. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/overController-c.html

The SCSI interface that such cards lie on are more likely to be capable of being mixed with IDE drives on the mobo than in the past but mixing SCSI and IDE boot devices is often problematic - PARTICULARLY for effects on the boot order. http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/scsi/confIDE-c.html

The best way of being sure the PCI card's BIOS do allow a particular system to identify the IDE drives attached to it would appear to be to temporarily detatch all IDE/ATAPI devices from the mobo's controllers and disable the same controllers from the main BIOS setup. If they show up OK but then "disappear" when the mainboards controllers come back into play some enlightenmnet should ensue. If they don't then show up - then something more specific would appear to be astray.

[alex666]

Paul, your suggestion to detach everything AND turn off the mobo controllers is a good one.

The issue of boot order is not relevant at this point. That comes after he can get his system to identify the drives attached to the controller card as well as any drives attached to the mobo controllers. You are correct that that can be tricky sometimes.

One other thought I had was to absolutely double check your power connections and triple check your data connections. I still think trying cable select is worth a shot. But again, I would start with just one hdd on that controller card and go from there. Keep it simple.

Finally, keep in mind that mobos sometimes read add-in cards as scsi even though they are not scsi. The promise ata/100 card I inserted earlier indeed registered as scsi. This happens sometimes with sata drives as well. The OP is not using a scsi card; he stated it was an ide controller.

And I'm done making any comments until the OP shows up!!

marty

[Paul Komski]

The OP is not using a scsi card; he stated it was an ide controller. I didn't think there had been any suggestion that the card was a scsi card; if so interpreted then the wording could probably have been better . All such controller cards (whether made for the attachment of SCSI or PATA or SATA devices do however connect to the system using the SCSI interface/bus. This "intelligent" system can communicate with the main BIOS and other mobo chipsets in various ways and the intelligent part comes about because most if not all the logic is done by the boards themselves.

As an aside, once windows has loaded the same intelligent interface can be invoked to support virtual SCSI drives such as the DVDRW of Daemon Tools. The flexibility of the interface also meant that the very first SATA-capable drives (on their own slots) were often programmed as if they were SCSI devices because this much easier to program into such boards before SATA went native.