Serious Seagate SATA Situation...

[DudeAbides]

Alright, I've pretty much hit the limit of both my technical abilities and my patients... i.e I'm starting to lose my cool (been working on this straight since 11:30 this morning (and by that I mean yesterday morning <_< ) On to the problem:

I purchased an OEM seagate SATAII HD which simply will not boot XP during the second half of installation. I ran a long scan of the drive with Seatools and the drive appears to be fine. If I boot up with my old ATA drive, I can see the SATA drive and write to it. I've tried pushing f6 during windows install to load SATA/RAID drivers from a floppy. I've also tried two different Windows CDs.

I did a bit of research on the problem and it seems I'm not the only one experiencing it; most are able to fix it by changing the way the drive is recognized from the bios from 'Auto' to 'Large', however I am not...of course.

I'm not trying to RAID or anything, I just want this one SATA drive to work on my system.

What have I overlooked? This is maddening

Thanks in advance for any help I get.[/i]

Edit: forgot to mention...

AMD Venice 3500+
MSI K8n neo4 Platinum
1 gig corsair valueselect DDR400
Seagate Barracuda 320gig SATAII drive

 

[g-paw]

If the drive is SATA 3.0 and the mobo connections are 1.5, you may have to change the jumper settings. I'd check this if you haven't

 

[DudeAbides]

Ok, I'm not sure exactly what that entails. I'm not very familiar with SATA, but I know I pulled a little plastic thingy off my HD because it said to do that if you wanted to run in 3.0 (which I do). My cable is rated for 3.0 and my motherboard is as well (MSI k8n neo4 Platinum [nForce4 chipset]).

 

[g-paw]

Ok, I'm not sure exactly what that entails. I'm not very familiar with SATA, but I know I pulled a little plastic thingy off my HD because it said to do that if you wanted to run in 3.0 (which I do). My cable is rated for 3.0 and my motherboard is as well (MSI k8n neo4 Platinum [nForce4 chipset]).

Sounds like you changed the jumper settings. I'd try the following: Make sure you have the latest BIOS for the mobo. If you do, clear the CMOS, instructions will be in the manual. Make sure the drive is attached to the SATA 1 connection, usually they're marked, in your case 1 - 4, I think you have 4 SATA connections. Try a different SATA cable. Do a full format during Windows installation make sure it's NTFS. Since hitting F8 doesn't work, try a different key board. If you have more than one stick of RAM, I take one out. I'd also take out any other PCI cards, e.g., sound card or wireless card. Even though the drives seems to check out, if you have access to another SATA drive, I'd try it. Sounds like it's the only drive if the computer, if not, disconnect any other ones. If none of the above works and you can't think of anything else, I'd RMA the drive. Even though RAMing the drive is a pain, at some point it's worth your psychic well being.

 

[DudeAbides]

Hah. Yeah the thought has crossed my mind. Although I think I may have found the problem... it turns out MSI have two different descriptions for the "K8n Neo4 Platinum (PCB 1.0)" <_< The one I was referring to for my specs appears to be wrong, and in fact I only have SATA 1.5 instead of 3.0. So yeah, I'm thinking I just have to slip the jumper back on and try again. I'll let you know if that works out.

Oh and you don't believe me about the MSI sites...
My actual board
"Ultra" edition

...Notice the heading on both pages is the same- it would have been nice if they were labeled properly.

 

[g-paw]

Hah. Yeah the thought has crossed my mind. Although I think I may have found the problem... it turns out MSI have two different descriptions for the "K8n Neo4 Platinum (PCB 1.0)" <_< The one I was referring to for my specs appears to be wrong, and in fact I only have SATA 1.5 instead of 3.0. So yeah, I'm thinking I just have to slip the jumper back on and try again. I'll let you know if that works out.

Oh and you don't believe me about the MSI sites...
My actual board
"Ultra" edition

...Notice the heading on both pages is the same- it would have been nice if they were labeled properly.

Not surprised. A few years back, I think it was a 478 mobo, MSI had the front case wiring wrong, although at least that time they had a correction on their web site, which apparently they didn't with this. Be sure to let us know if that's it.

 

[DudeAbides]

Sigh. No luck. I still can't manage to work this drive.
Here are some more details:
-320 gig capacity
-Won't partition with Partition Magic
-No errors reported with Seatools
-Will format to FAT32 no problem
-Appears to format with XP disk, but after it copies the files and reboots I get "Error loading operating system."
-Speed can be checked through the SATA drivers in the device manager
-SATA CD drive works fine.

Any ideas?

 

[g-paw]

I've been using Partition Magic for years and if it won't partition the drive in addition to everything else, I'd RMA the drive. Seagate makes good drives, been using them exclusively for the last couple of years, but no one is perfect. so I wouldn't be too upset if you have to do an exchange rather than a return. If you can do a return and are fed up with Seagate, Western Digital has a good rep. Maxtor doesn't have a very good rep right now but they've been bought by Seagate so maybe they're getting better. I recently got a Samsung DVD burner and really like it, quieter than NEC or Lite-On but have no idea what their hdd are like. One of the less rational reasons I hate to do an RMA is that I feel like I'm giving up and have been defeated because I couldn't fix the problem, which is really pretty dumb thinking. :x

 

[DudeAbides]

Yeah, I know that feeling. I just don't understand wtf is wrong... if I can write to the drive and it passes all diags it should be fine, right? Sigh. Oh well, if I can't get it working by Monday I'll RMA.

 

[g-paw]

Yeah, I know that feeling. I just don't understand wtf is wrong... if I can write to the drive and it passes all diags it should be fine, right? Sigh. Oh well, if I can't get it working by Monday I'll RMA.

I agree, logic says it should work, unfortunately, logic doesn't always rule in the real world. I believe you said you ran the Seagate diagnostic by chance did you run the install program off a Floppy?

 

[DudeAbides]

CD. I just ran a low-level wipe of the drive and I'm trying to format it with windows. Should I be formatting as logical or primary? I went with primary because, well, you know its primary, I figured I should use that for what I ultimately plan to be my only drive.

Another question- assuming I get to a point where I can format it but still not install the OS correctly, should I try using the disk migration software from Seagate to just copy the OS from my working ATA drive onto the SATA?

Thanks again for the help.

 

[g-paw]

CD. I just ran a low-level wipe of the drive and I'm trying to format it with windows. Should I be formatting as logical or primary? I went with primary because, well, you know its primary, I figured I should use that for what I ultimately plan to be my only drive.

Another question- assuming I get to a point where I can format it but still not install the OS correctly, should I try using the disk migration software from Seagate to just copy the OS from my working ATA drive onto the SATA?

Thanks again for the help.

Yes you should format as Primary, NTFS. I'd do a full rather than quick format. Logical is for storage, Primary is for Windows. You could try the migration if the ATA is from the same machine, i.e., all the hardware is the same or you'll likely run into driver problems. The problem is that even if it works, you still haven't solved the problem so what do you do the next time you have to reinstall Windows on that drive? I'd guess the probability of not having to reinstall Windows sometime is about the same as winning the lottery. I'd do it just to see if it works but I'd still RMA the drive.

 

[DudeAbides]

Point taken. I'm still in the midst of formatting the drive, so I haven't had a chance to test it yet. If it doesn't work I'm just gunna curse a lot then RMA on monday. If anyone else has any suggestions I'd be glad to here them... but as far as I can tell I've addressed all the problems that others were having with their SATA installs.
-Drive type set to "Large" in bios
-XP install disk includes sp2
-hit f6 and loaded SATA drivers while attempting XP install. (although I don't think you have to with sp2 and nforce4 boards)
-Jumper set correctly

 

[g-paw]

I'm heading out to dinner with the wife and will offer a couple of glasses of Bass to the computer gods for your success. Good luck

 

[DudeAbides]

Mmmm.... Bass is good stuff. Cheers!