All these years I still can't find an answer ...

[imnotageek]

A few good years ago, I used to have a MSI mobo with IDE and SATA1 HDs. I partitioned my HDs and installed WinXP into the SATA1 drive.

Once a week, Windows registry would get corrupted and I would have to reinstall OS. Since then, I changed the power supply, add another SATA2 HD (and installed WinXP onto that), added new RAM, and change the mobo (ASUS A8N SLi).

The difference was that I got a registry corruption almost every night and have to reinstall OS via Norton Ghost or at times via manual effort.

How can that be? I got fed up and gave up on SATA and Windows partition. Instead, I install OS onto my IDE having my SATA1 and SATA2 HDs as storage device. Since then (for the past 1 year), my life has been really peaceful. No more resinstalling OS every so often.

I ponder hard on this and it just doesn't make sense. And I feel bad that I have to settle for an IDE HD.

One day, I noticed that the SATA HDs are being recognized as removable devices under WinXP. In rare occasion (usually when I have just connected an USB device into my computer or I forgot to take out a DVD from the boot drive), the computer boots up with the BIOS not recognizing one of the SATA drives.

Is it because at times when Windows boot up and if the HD was not properly detected, WinXP "thinks" that the registry file is corrupted?

Although I now don't have the problem anymore (by not using a SATA HD for OS), I think perhaps my HD is bottlenecking the performance of my gaming machine. Also, I intend to purchase a new 500GB SATA2 HD as I am running out of space. If I am going to get a new HD, I may as well try again to boot it from there right?

I wonder if any of you have encountered something like this before. It is tempting to conclude that the mobo is faulty. For both MSI and ASUS mobo's, I brought them to the distributor and ran the test. Everything seems fine.

Strange ...

Edit: nukemaster has brought up a good point. My hard-disks are recognized as removable device, not USB device. Thanks.

 

[nukemaster]

Maybe it was a bad cable?

The last 3 computers i built all used sata hard drives with no problems....but a bad cable may cause data corruption...

Your drives should not show up as USB, it should show up as a
removable device(Since sata is hot pluggable)

Did you install the Nvidia IDE/SATA drivers? those will make the drive show as removable.

Many have reported problems with Nvidia's IDE/SATA drivers.

As for performance, There is not difference since the limit of hard drive speed lays in the mechanical spinning platers.....So the same drive for sata and ide will perform the same....

New drives are faster then old ones....but thats just a newer drive...not sata

My suggestion.

Use the windows default drivers for your sata drives....When you install the Nvidia platform drivers just uncheck IDE/SATA drivers

I use Intel(Sata/Raid) drivers with no issues at all....but i have heard the Nvidia ones can get buggy....

 

[imnotageek]

Sounds to me as if the A8N SLi has a SATA-I device driver,
and there may be a BIOS setting that defaults to SATA-II.

Two things must be in sync, for SATA drives to work
smoothly:

the default interface speed of the HDD
must be the same as
the default interface speed of the BIOS

If the SATA drive defaults to 150MB/second,
be sure the BIOS expects that same speed.

For example, on many ASUS motherboards,
"Standard IDE" defaults to 150MB/second, but
both AHCI and RAID on older chipsets
default to 300MB/second, and those settings may
require a HDD jumper to be set to 300MB/second.

Okay, I will certainly give it a try to see if I can find out what speed does the BIOS expects. I would suppose in my case whereby I have a mix of IDE, SATA1, SATA2, the BIOS should be able to support them, ya?

I believe this restriction has been relaxed
on more recent chipsets.

Also, double-check all of your HDDs for any
extra jumpers that might be interfering,
e.g. staggered spin-up and/or spread spectrum
clocking.

The latter are features that must be supported
in the SATA device driver, either on-board that
motherboard, or loaded from a Support CD
provided with that motherboard.

BEST WAY is to DISABLE both staggered spin-up
and spread spectrum clocking, and DISCONNECT
all non-system HDDs during Windows Setup.

Okay, this could be a bit challenging as I am not sure if I still have the instruction manual. I will see if there are jumper info on the HD itself.

Once XP is properly installed on a SATA HDD,
then Plug-and-Play logic will detect any new
hardware devices that are added to that machine.


I hope this helps.


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library
http://www.supremelaw.org/

I like your advice on installing XP into one SATA HD first. I may give that a try once I get a new HD. Thanks so much for your reply. It is the strangest and the most frustrating thing I have experienced for a long time. Made me want to switch to Apple had I not so in love with all the PC games.

 

[nukemaster]

Once XP is properly installed on a SATA HDD,
then Plug-and-Play logic will detect any new
hardware devices that are added to that machine.

I also unplug all other drives and card readers during install

 

[imnotageek]

Maybe it was a bad cable?

Quite unlikely the cable. Because when I change the mobo, I got a new set of cables.

The last 3 computers i built all used sata hard drives with no problems....but a bad cable may cause data corruption...

Your drives should not show up as USB, it should show up as a
removable device(Since sata is hot pluggable)

Hmmm ... maybe you are right. It should show up as removeable device. I always thought that all removable devices are USB ... my bad (I am not really that good with computer ...)

Did you install the Nvidia IDE/SATA drivers? those will make the drive show as removable.

Many have reported problems with Nvidia's IDE/SATA drivers.

Yes, I use the Nvidia driver.

As for performance, There is not difference since the limit of hard drive speed lays in the mechanical spinning platers.....So the same drive for sata and ide will perform the same....

New drives are faster then old ones....but thats just a newer drive...not sata

My suggestion.

Use the windows default drivers for your sata drives....When you install the Nvidia platform drivers just uncheck IDE/SATA drivers

I use Intel(Sata/Raid) drivers with no issues at all....but i have heard the Nvidia ones can get buggy....

So I would think if I uninstall the nVidia platform drivers, Windows will automatically install their default IDE/SATA drivers for me? Okay ... worth a try ... since I tried so many things in the past already.

Thanks!

 

[rgsaunders]

A few good years ago, I used to have a MSI mobo with IDE and SATA1 HDs. I partitioned my HDs and installed WinXP into the SATA1 drive.

Once a week, Windows registry would get corrupted and I would have to reinstall OS. Since then, I changed the power supply, add another SATA2 HD (and installed WinXP onto that), added new RAM, and change the mobo (ASUS A8N SLi).

The difference was that I got a registry corruption almost every night and have to reinstall OS via Norton Ghost or at times via manual effort.

How can that be? I got fed up and gave up on SATA and Windows partition. Instead, I install OS onto my IDE having my SATA1 and SATA2 HDs as storage device. Since then (for the past 1 year), my life has been really peaceful. No more resinstalling OS every so often.

I ponder hard on this and it just doesn't make sense. And I feel bad that I have to settle for an IDE HD.

One day, I noticed that the SATA HDs are being recognized as removable devices under WinXP. In rare occasion (usually when I have just connected an USB device into my computer or I forgot to take out a DVD from the boot drive), the computer boots up with the BIOS not recognizing one of the SATA drives.

Is it because at times when Windows boot up and if the HD was not properly detected, WinXP "thinks" that the registry file is corrupted?

Although I now don't have the problem anymore (by not using a SATA HD for OS), I think perhaps my HD is bottlenecking the performance of my gaming machine. Also, I intend to purchase a new 500GB SATA2 HD as I am running out of space. If I am going to get a new HD, I may as well try again to boot it from there right?

I wonder if any of you have encountered something like this before. It is tempting to conclude that the mobo is faulty. For both MSI and ASUS mobo's, I brought them to the distributor and ran the test. Everything seems fine.

Strange ...

Edit: nukemaster has brought up a good point. My hard-disks are recognized as removable device, not USB device. Thanks.

An issue that might be affecting your setup - if you are using certain Western Digital sata drives, on older motherboards you have to set the jumper on the drive to SATA 150. Default is 300 - no jumper. If you don't you can end up with all kinds of nasty boot problems etc. A point to consider, although SATA is theoretically faster than PATA, in reality, with equivalent drives, there is little to no performance difference in the real world. This is in a single master drive config for PATA, once you get into master/slave configurations you do take a penalty compared to multiple SATA drives.

 

[nukemaster]

if you uninstall the Nvidia platform drivers they should be reinstall(with custom to just not install the IDE/SATA drivers)....its just the IDE/SATA ones you do not want. The chipset drivers are still good(and maybe even needed for stability) to have.....

 

[grieve]

Act of God.... Must be

 

[BUFF]

I agree with nukemaster - it's the nVidia drivers.
Don't intsall the IDE/storage drivers & don't install the nVidia Network Access Manager either.

 

[nowwhatnapster]

if your comfortable updating the bios for your mobo that is another factor you can rule out.