M / B ABIT NF7-S VER 2.0 does not recognize the new SATA HD

Hi,

It is possible that the SATA controller on your motherboard does not support auto negotiation. In that case, you maybe able to find a jumper block beside the SATA interface of your hard drive which has the option to limit the transfer rate of your HDD to 1.5Gbits/s to match with your SATA controller.

Does the HDD showed the same behavior in the system with the jumper set to normal and/or set to 1.5Gbits/s limit?

I really doubt that "compatibility" is your issue. Almost all SATA controllers can handle all SATA HDD's. The ONLY exception to that "general rule" is that some early SATA controllers (BEFORE SATA II) could not handle SATA II or III (more properly now called SATA 3.0 Gb/s and 6.0 Gb/s). That is what trekzone was suggesting with the jumper idea.

Check these items.
1. Go into BIOS Setup to where you set the SATA ports for your hard drives. In that area you will find a line for SATA Port Mode. On some systems, the setting here affects all SATA ports at once; on others, you get to set the Mode for each SATA port individually. The possible settings there may include "IDE (or PATA) Emulation", "Native SATA", "AHCI", or "RAID". In your case, because you are using Win XP, you should set this to "IDE (or PATA) Emulation". XP does not have its own "built-in" driver for AHCI devices (the real nature of SATA), so this work-around setting tells the BIOS to limit the unit's behaviour to only the things an older IDE device can do (not much of a limit, really) and make it appear to Windows to be that device type. Then Win XP is happy to deal with a device it understands.

2. Look in BIOS Setup where you set the Boot Priority. Make sure it is trying to boot from your older 160 GB unit, and NOT trying the new one at all.

Once you make any changes in these settings, be sure to SAVE and EXIT, and the machine should boot properly.

On reviewing your posts, I thought of another thing to check. You say the 750 GB unit is owned by a friend who Partitioned and Formatted it. If that work was done on another machine that used the drive as an AHCI device, it is possible its Partition Table contains information that Win XP cannot understand, and it is only Windows that is having a problem. After all, it appears the drive works OK on other machines and in an external enclosure. IF that is your problem you could try this. Mount the 750 GB unit in your machine, ensure your BIOS is set as above, and use Windows Disk Management to Delete all the Partitions on the drive, then Create a new Partition and Format it. That might get it to work.

I found a few user-group forums (fora?) discussing this SIL3112A controller chip and it does seem to be very touchy. The ultimate solution, of course, is to install a separate HDD controller card in a PCI slot, or to replace the entire mobo etc. But for less drastic solutions, try these hints:

1. Ensure you download and install ("burn") the latest BIOS update for your mobo's BIOS from the manufacturer, ABIT. Be sure to get the BIOS for exactly your mobo - model number AND version number. Be sure to follow their instructions exactly. You'll have to reboot, set the BIOS to Optimized Defaults, then make any customizing adjustments to it. For that purpose, BEFORE installing the BIOS update you should go through the BIOS Setup screens and make notes of ANY setting that you have changed that is not the default setting.
2. Also download from ABIT the latest device driver for the SIL controller on your mobo. If at all possible, get it from ABIT, and not from SIL. The ABIT driver may be customized to work with their mobo's BIOS. Install this driver under Windows as a driver update.
3. Install a speed-limiting jumper as trekzone advised and as you have said in your post of Apr 25 at 2:02. Although I said most controllers don't need this, it appears to me now that trekzone is right and this controller does need to have the drive limited this way.

I did not find any notes about a size limit of the HDD connected to this mobo and controller chip. The design and specs for ALL SATA systems are supposed to handle HDD's of all sizes - up to more than Windows can handle! (The 137 GB "limit" of 10 years ago was related to older IDE systems that did not have a feature called "48-bit LBA Support", but all SATA systems were supposed to have that.) BUT I know that some early controllers did not fully conform to the specs, so I can't really say your system can work properly with the 750 GB size.

SATA II is supposed to be completely backwards compatible with SATA I. But the one well-known glitch in this, as outlined above, is that some early SATA I controller chips were not properly equipped to do auto-negotiation of communication speeds when the later SATA II systems arrived. In those cases,when you connect a SATA II HDD to a poorly-designed SATA I controller, the two fail to agree on a way to communicate. The solution is relatively simple. On almost all SATA II HDD's you can install a jumper between two specific pins on its back edge to force it to communicate only at the slower SATA I speeds, and the entire things works. Which pins? Check for a diagram on the HDD, or go to its maker's website. Other than that, I have never heard of SATA II failing to work with an older SATA I port.

To search for a BIOS update, try Google to search for "BIOS Update ABIT NF7-S" or something similar. You may well find that such things ARE available from user groups and archiving sites, even though ABIT no longer exists. BUT if you do that and find something, make sure you also search out some pretty clear instructions for how to actually do the update process. (Maybe it's already there in the manual for your mobo?) You can use the same process for updates of device drivers, if you need any. Of couse, those don;t need to be "burned" into BIOS - they just install as driver updates within Windows.