SATA Ports Not Working

[K88]

hi,
I have 4 sata ports and 3 hard drive on my Intel P45 Express Motherboard. when both sata drive are connected to the port windows only recognises 1 drive at time it doesn't matter at which port because I have swapped them over and both drives work fine on SATA1 and SATA2 but only one at time...can you suggest how I can get them both working please?

[Rawko]

You quite likely have an option in the bios setup menu to enable the ports. Each motherboard bios however is slightly different, so without knowing the brand name and model motherboard, I can't give you specific details. Go in there and take a look to make sure all ports are enabled.

[Gunner]

Sounds like an issue with the Intel ICH10 which controls the sata ports? I might be having the same problem.

I added a WD 160 SATA drive and the bios sees it, but the operating system does not. I used an external usb to attach the drive and vista sees it.
I was also randomly getting those three long beeps. I would open the case, detach and reattach cables, check to make sure everything was seated properly....near the end I thought it was that the power cable wasn't in all the way tight (every time I would attach the WD 160 I would pull the power cable first).

[Fabian]

If the SATA controller chip is either RAID or non-RAID then why can the mirror and primary drive co-exist on the controller in their current configuration?

- It's not working. Isn't that why you are here?
- It is trying to form a RAID array out of all 3 drives which is why it isn't working.
- You are using (or trying to) hardware raid. The chip (Hardware) can be either all raid or all not raid.
- If you operate the chip as non-raid (as a normal controller) you can then use software raid. (As the last poster is doing.) In this mode the chip is operating as non-raid and the software 'fakes it'. You can in fact do software raid using completely seperate controllers as with mixing IDE and SATA drives or even (I think) through USB ports.
- Or you can get another controller if you want to use hardware raid as I assumed you were trying to do.

[Hamir]

• Go into bios and make sure the Sata port your hard drive is connected to is enabled. Also check the power connection to the hard drive, I know it seems silly, but it happens.
  
• It should be in the standard cmos menu and list sata 1 thru 6.select the sata port your hard is connected to and <enter>.
  
• set to "Auto". this should let the system auto detect your hard drive.
  
• if all else fails, set all the ports to auto, one of them should show your hard drive.
• if you have more than one hard drive hooked up, disconnect all but the drive you want to boot from,then reconnect them one at a time after you install windows.