First Build Complete - Doesn't see hard drives

[jpp]

I finished my first build a couple of weeks ago. The build consisted of:

GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6300
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3320620A 320GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive

Anyways, the build was fine. I was only using one dvd drive and one hard drive. I had two others I wanted to put into the system, but being a first timer I completely missed the fact that the motherboard only had one IDE port on the motherboard. Well, I decided just to order a pci ide card, (HD CONTROLLER SYBA|SD-ATA133I PCI R - Retail to be exact. Here is where the fun comes in.

I installed it, turned on the computer, xp recognized it. It installed. Turned off the system, plugged in the two hard drives (one seagate, and one western digital I had from my other computer), but then the computer wouldn't boot. It would hang at the boot from cd/dvd command. So I unplugged it from the seagate and it would boot into windows, but it wouldn't recognize the disk.

Long story short I tried a whole bunch of combinations, played with the bios, etc. I got fed up and bought usb enclosures for both disks. Neither of them worked on the new build. Tried plugging them into a laptop. No luck there either.

So any support? Do you think the hdd's are dead? I find it weird that the one that was working fine doesn't work anymore. Any input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Killercop]

Have you formatted the HDD's which is going through the PCI card? Not by installing XP, but formatted them with XP? Like when buying a external HDD..?

 

[jpp]

I tried. I booted into windows and went to disk management to try and format it that way, it wouldn't recognize the drive. In device manager it listed the hdd as a disk drive, and as a usb mass storage device. But no luck in disk management.

 

[Killercop]

Have you tried looking in the manual?

 

[HoldenMcGroin]

This reminds me of those stories where XP doesn't like too many system changes at once. Makes me wonder if he should've put everything together first, then loaded XP.

 

[Killercop]

Hmmm.. Maybe..

Maybe you need to activate or register them, or something, before you can use them.. I think it's something about that card.

 

[ethel]

If I read that correctly (sorry if I am on the wrong track here) the machine is trying to boot off of the pci card disk, not the original disk.

If that's true, then check the boot order in the BIOS. Also check the pci card documentation - maybe the disks have to be both set up as slaves or someting weird?

I doubt that both disks are dead unless you dropped them or something - but you could check that easily by connecting them to the IDE channel on your mobo and seeing if it recognises them - you know that this approach works with the other disk.

Good luck.

 

[jpp]

I think I misspoke in my original statement. I have a dvd drive and a hard drive on ide cables coming from the motherboard. I have a brand new drive, but no ide port to plug it into. So I ordered the pci-ide card. Plugged the card in, installed it in windows, then shut down. I then installed the new hard drive into the new card (set to cs) and booted up. The card sees it, but once I get into windows I don't see it. Not in device manager, not in disk manager.

I tried a million and one combinations and I couldn't get it to show up in windows. So I've come to you guys for help, haha. Hopefully that was a more thourough explanation.

[EDIT - to clarify about the enclosures] I went to the store and got a external enclosure to see if I could format it that way. No luck there either. I plugged it in, it recognized it as a disk drive (usb mass storage) and that was that. Couldn't format it or see it in disk/device manager.

 

[rivalneighbour]

Let me explain. you dont need that pci card ide extension. no shame in buying it.

Your motherboard and hard drive configuration is not IDE it is infact SATA. heres a picture of your hard drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?Image=22%2D148%2D140%2D01%2Ejpg%2C22%2D148%2D140%2D02%2Ejpg&CurImage=22%2D148%2D140%2D01%2Ejpg&Description=Seagate+Barracuda+7200%2E10+ST3320620AS+%28Perpendicular+Recording+Technology%29+320GB+7200+RPM+SATA+3%2E0Gb%2Fs+Hard+Drive+%2D+OEM

heres a picture of your motherboard http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2321&ProductName=GA-965P-S3
Look at the sata orange headers above the green cdrom header next to the purple sata2 header.

connect the hard drives to the motherboard with the sata cable. little connector has an L shape.

motherboard bios configuration looks similar to mine
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n56/RivalNeighbour_2006/september/100_1005.jpg

make sure you get your motherboard configuration in bios correct. also you will have to enter your hard drive setup during boot by tapping certain keys after your post beep. might be control and I at the same time. might be F10. check your motherboard manual or look real quick duing the bootup on the screen.
once in your hard drive config area you select what type of raid you want and you name it and the stripe size...

after that you can install your operating system but if it windows you have to tap the F6 key to get to the sata drivers install area(floppy disk). install that then its a routine install after that.

sata is a pain isnt it.

EDIT- you would have had more proper responses if you would have posted this in the HARDWARE>GENERAL MOTHERBOARD>GIGABYTE area of forums.tomshardware.com. they have the same motherboard as you and go through this hardware routine setup all of the time.

 

[flasher702]

Let me explain. you dont need that pci card ide extension. no shame in buying it.

Your motherboard and hard drive configuration is not IDE it is infact SATA. heres a picture of your hard drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?Image=22%2D148%2D140%2D01%2Ejpg%2C22%2D148%2D140%2D02%2Ejpg&CurImage=22%2D148%2D140%2D01%2Ejpg&Description=Seagate+Barracuda+7200%2E10+ST3320620AS+%28Perpendicular+Recording+Technology%29+320GB+7200+RPM+SATA+3%2E0Gb%2Fs+Hard+Drive+%2D+OEM

heres a picture of your motherboard http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2321&ProductName=GA-965P-S3
Look at the sata orange headers above the green cdrom header next to the purple sata2 header.

connect the hard drives to the motherboard with the sata cable. little connector has an L shape.

motherboard bios configuration looks similar to mine
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n56/RivalNeighbour_2006/september/100_1005.jpg

make sure you get your motherboard configuration in bios correct. also you will have to enter your hard drive setup during boot by tapping certain keys after your post beep. might be control and I at the same time. might be F10. check your motherboard manual or look real quick duing the bootup on the screen.
once in your hard drive config area you select what type of raid you want and you name it and the stripe size...

after that you can install your operating system but if it windows you have to tap the F6 key to get to the sata drivers install area(floppy disk). install that then its a routine install after that.

sata is a pain isnt it.

He very clearly stated he has two IDE hds, one more HD, and an Optical DR which is most likely IDE and only 1 IDE channel on the mobo, which is correct. He also clearly stated he bought and IDE controller and plugged two HDs into it. It's completely impossible to plug a SATA drive into an IDE controller...

Real advice: To test the drives unplug the optical drive and plug a HD in there instead. If that boots up but still doesn't work you either don't know how to format a drive from windows (sounds like you have the right idea, and disk manager is pretty simple to use, but if the drive shows up in device manager *something* should happen in disk manager when you try to format it) or the drive is broken.

Right now this is your configuration
IDE master -> system drive
IDE slave -> optical drive
PCI IDE controller installed

change it to
IDE master -> system drive
IDE slave -> other drive
NO PCI IDE controller installed

Make sure teh drives are jumpered to master/slave. Auto-selet with IDE is not 100% reliable, if you have any problems jumper them manually. If there is only one device on an IDE channel make sure it is set to MASTER, not slave or cable select.

If this works try it with the other drive. If that works try it with the PCI IDE controller again.

What exactly are you doing in disk manager? What error messages do you get? What do you see (post a screen shot)? Did you try using the disk format utility from the drive vendor (it might be more user-friendly). Just leave the optical drive unplugged until you get all the HDs working properly and then plug it back in, that should simplify it slightly. Be careful of your drives while swapping them around a bunch like this

Also, durring boot up, you should get a flash of "hit such-and-such key to configure" from your PCI IDE controller. Hit that key and see what you can see in there. It should see both of your drives, if the card can't see both drives then obviously the OS won't either. Also there should be a setting in here for "boot". Set it to not boot from drives on the PCI IDE card. There should also be a setting in your mobo BIOS to boot from "other devices" or "SCSI" or something like that, you can just disable that for now and make sure that "HD0" or something like that is the first boot device, we only want to boot from the master HD of the integrated IDE controller right now.

Are there bent pins? Is your IDE cable good?

 

[Kingslayer]

Your problems sounds very similar to one I had recently.

Does one of the drives your trying to configure on the PCI card have an OS on it? This was my problem and my machine wouldn't boot and hung at the boot from CD/DVD screen everytime.
I think it detected the Master Boot Record on both drives, and couldnt decide which one to boot up?
What I did, I entered BIOS and I set the old drive(with the old OS on it) I set detection to manual not auto. This allowed my machine to boot with the new Drive and OS, and i could get to Disk Management and Format the old drive.

Hope this helps

 

[jpp]

Well I just tried making the system drive to master and the other drive to slave, granted I was lazy and just used the cable. I did get an error saying windows could not boot because of a conflict. I will try changing the jumpers now and also try chaning it from auto to manual.

I'm not doing anything it disk manager. I just see the C drive, and the dvd drive. Nothing else, that's where I'm lost.

My bad, didn't know there was a specific motherboard forum.

 

[jpp]

I set the primary to master, and set the secondary to slave via the jumpers. I get this error: Could not start windows, computer disk hardware configuration problem. Couldn't read boot disk.

But, when I remove the new (slave) drive it boots fine. Maybe because they are both the exact same drive? I don't know anymore, haha.

 

[pjmelect]

A stupid question, but did you remember to FDISK the new hard drive? If a drive is not FDISKed then Windows will not see it.

Secondly is the hard drive jumper set to master/slave correctly.

Thirdly is the cable the right way around (red stripe to power supply connector)

 

[flasher702]

A stupid question, but did you remember to FDISK the new hard drive? If a drive is not FDISKed then Windows will not see it.

Secondly is the hard drive jumper set to master/slave correctly.

Thirdly is the cable the right way around (red stripe to power supply connector)

1) You do not need to fdisk your HD nor would fdisk be capable of properly formatting a modern HD for WinXP. Windows is perfectly capable of reformatting it for you from the disk manager.

2) Do double check the jumper settings. It doesn't matter that they are both the same kind of drive. It does sound like you may be jumpering them incorrectly. Make sure that the PCI IDE controller is not installed at this time, I don't want it confusing you.

3) The IDE cable will only fit one way, it's keyed. It may not even have a red stripe, nor would it have anything to do with the PSU connector anyway.

Set the system drive to master, and the other one to slave, then go into the BIOS. There should be a place for detecting and configuring HDs, it should show your HDs there. If that doesn't work set the system drive to master, and the other drive to auto and go back to the bios again. If that doesn't work set them both to auto and check the BIOS a third time.

Once both of your drives are showing up in the BIOS you should also be able to boot into windows. Go to start > control panel > administrative tools > Disk Managment. Up above it will show you drive letters such as A: C: D: whatever. Ignore those. Below it there should be a list of PHYSICAL drives. You should see Disk 0, it should say your C: drive is on it. There should also be Disk 1 with nothing in it. Right-click on Disk 1 and there should be a number of options for setting the Disk up to put logical drives on it and format them.

Once you get to this point you should be able to figure out everything you've been doing wrong. Install the PCI IDE controller, make sure the system isn't trying to boot from it, boot into windows and get both drives up and running. Then install your Optical Drive again.

The error message you gave me is confusing? When did you get that error message? It sounds like it found a MBR and tried to strap a Micro Soft OS and then ran into a problem.

 

[jpp]

No pci ide controller was installed. The jumper settings were correct. I do see both hard drives in the bios. I am still not able to boot into windows.

I got that error message after the system got done listing all the components. When I first turn the computer on it says detecting ide devices, I see both hard drives. Then it will detect all other devices (usb/firewire/lan etc...big list) - then it will go to a blank screen, then the error will show up.

The thing I found odd was, I tried putting the brand new drive into the computer (removed the current system one), then tried installed windows on it. Windows setup said it found no hard drive.

 

[kstrat2001]

I think the mistake you think you made is wrong. You said that you missed the fact that there was only 1 IDE channel. However, it might be a bigger mistake that you didn't realize you were ordering antiquated hardware. SATA is the way to go these days. Keep your IDE drives as a back up and get yourself some NCQ capable SATA drives. It would be a shame to see that new Core 2 duo bottlenecked by an IDE channel data storage system.

If you are really adventurous you can use the one IDE channel and a single IDE drive as your swap file carrier for a little better performance.

 

[flasher702]

No pci ide controller was installed. The jumper settings were correct. I do see both hard drives in the bios. I am still not able to boot into windows.

I got that error message after the system got done listing all the components. When I first turn the computer on it says detecting ide devices, I see both hard drives. Then it will detect all other devices (usb/firewire/lan etc...big list) - then it will go to a blank screen, then the error will show up.

The thing I found odd was, I tried putting the brand new drive into the computer (removed the current system one), then tried installed windows on it. Windows setup said it found no hard drive.

So you installed one HD and the optical drive, booted off the Windows installation CD, and it said it couldn't find the HD? Sounds like the drive is broken then. Did you try the other HD too?

If you can boot off the optical drive while the "bad" HD is installed you should be able to boot off the system drive as well though. I think something else is still wrong here.

So you have one working HD and two suspsected bad HDs. Try to do a clean install of windows on both of the suspected bad HDs and let us know how it goes.

Buying SATA drives does not fix the IDE drives he already has. That's a non-solution that he could have easily figured out himself. The IDE drives should work fine in the configuration he listed. They are either broken or he's installing them incorrectly. He managed to install one of them correctly and install windows so he's not a complete moron and I'm assuming something fishy is going on.

 

[kstrat2001]

I'm sorry if I implied someone was a "moron". I certainly did not want to give that impression. I'm just giving the best advice given the current situation. The hard drive is the slowest device in a system. Therefore the faster you can go on the hard drive the less of a bottleneck it will be. This is the reason for running in raid 0 as well. Using IDE on such a system is a bad idea. I once made the mistake of buying a new video card thinking I'd be all ready to play Doom 3. The problem was that my processor/RAM bottlenecked the system so bad that I barely saw any performance increase. Allowing bottlenecks in the system means wasted money on high end components that never reach their potential.

However, since the problem is still unsolved I did do some research on that PCI card and there are issues with multiple operating systems. You may end up having to customize the boot loader in your system to get this thing to work properly.

 

[jpp]

Well, that was my fault for not doing my research enough on hard drives. I did research enough on everything else though, haha.

I just find it weird though, that when I put it in all by itself, the bios would see it, but a windows installer disk would not.

Anyways, my system only has one OS, so would I still have to customize the boot loader?

 

[kstrat2001]

I don't think anyone should have to configure their boot loader. That is a waste of time and could also lead to problems. I do however think you may have a faulty drive on your hands. You said you put the new drive (the one that you have been trying to put in the pci card ide connection) on the main mobo ide channel and it didn't work? If you try using the new drive as a master on the IDE channel by itself (no dvd, no slave) that's a sign of DOA. I once had an old WD that crapped out and I got similar issues that you have had. I ran a scandisk on it and it said the drive was bad. Made sense to me. That was the last IDE drive I'll ever own.

Your last hope may be to RMA and see if you have any better luck with a new one. It's a last resort but after all you have been through do you really want to go through even more hassle only to figure out the drive is doa?

 

[jpp]

Well, I'll try returning it and let you guys know how the new one is! Thanks for all the help!