Western Digital Caviar 400GB SATA Problem

[MeatPie]

I recently bought a 400GB Western Digital Caviar SATA drive. However my BIOS does not detect it after POSTing. I have enabled the SATA controller in the BIOS. It tells me there is a problem with the drive. I can hear and feel the drive spinning up so power is not a problem.

My Mobo is an Aopen AK86-L so it's a fairly old system.

Anyone have any ideas what may be causing this?

Currently have 2 IDE drives (both 75GB Maxtors) on the primary channel and a DVD writer on the seconday. (Yes yes i know not opimal configuration but I can't be arsed switching them and setting jumpers.)

There is no other SATA drive in my system. Also, my first time with SATA stuff now.

 

[MeatPie]

It seems the drive is now recognised. The cables were not attached snugly enough it seems. However the drive makes loud clicks every now and then. More of a "thump" than a click. :?

Another problem is under windows the drive does not appear. I checked the device manager and it seems my SATA RAID controller refuses to start. This was NOT the case when the BIOS could not detect the drive.

Any ideas?

 

[MeatPie]

Now it seems either my brand new drive just died or my SATA controller died. The controller went through its BIOS after POST but this time didn't detect the drive. And the drive did not make any noise whatsoever during POST.

 

[pat]

Now it seems either my brand new drive just died or my SATA controller died. The controller went through its BIOS after POST but this time didn't detect the drive. And the drive did not make any noise whatsoever during POST.

It could be your PSU not powerful enough or dying.. Happenned to me with an old Antec PSU that died from bad cap when I put a 300 gigs seagate on an older system...

 

[MeatPie]

PSU is a 520 Watt Antec Truepower that has lasted me a very long time. I am running an AMD 64 2800+ and a Geforce 6800GT. Would that eat up that much power you think?

And a while ago I had a third IDE drive in there and power was not a problem. The drive died after 5 years though.

 

[MeatPie]

I was reading through the SATA driver readme again and I noticed this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIA VT6420 SATA RAID and IDE controller supports two configurations:1) Two
SATA HDDs + Two IDE HDDs, and 2) Four SATA HDDs. The RAID functions are only
supported on SATA HDDs. It supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD, these functions,
however, are not supported on IDE HDDS. This "VIA VT6420 Software Package" is
used to install the drivers and utility which are needed for using the VIA
VT6420 SATA RAID and IDE controller.

However i tested with my 2 HDD on the primary and leaving the DVD drive on the secondary unplugged. Still no go.

 

[MeatPie]

Ok here is the message right after POST. The serial ATA RAID controller is built in the mobo and is a VT8237.

After scanning for devices it comes up with -

Hardware initiate failed, please check device!!!
The BIOS does not be installed, press <g> to continue.

Yes the poor grammar in the above message does show up like that. Pressing g simply continues booting windows.

Funny thing. It isn't recognised in the BIOS but the WD tools under windows does. However it lists size as 2.1TB. I WISH! :roll:

 

[MeatPie]

Now it seems either my brand new drive just died or my SATA controller died. The controller went through its BIOS after POST but this time didn't detect the drive. And the drive did not make any noise whatsoever during POST.

It could be your PSU not powerful enough or dying.. Happenned to me with an old Antec PSU that died from bad cap when I put a 300 gigs seagate on an older system...

Actually after further testing using another PC it seems as though you are right. The drive works fine in another PC. In the other PC the drive spins up and there is no clicking noise.

In mine it spins up, clicks and then spins down in a second. Then it spins up again, clicks and spins down again. It keeps doing that. In my PC, leaving the power connector to the drive but having the SATA disconnected i still get the clicks. This did not happen in the other PC. Which means it must be the PSU. Guess i'll have to replace my PSU. Never done that before... :?