MSI-7025 and 1TB HDD issue - need help!

[vancekic]

Hi all!

I recently bought two Seagate 1TB Barracuda 7200.12 hard drives. I put the first one in my brand new Windows 7 machine and everything is working fine.

I put the second one in my old PC running Windows XP, using a MSI-7025 motherboard (Asus K8N Neo 2 Platinum : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia,873-5.html)

I want this drive to be a pure data drive, no boot on it. The drive is well detected by the BIOS but for some reason, the machine freezes during the Windows XP boot (always at the same "place", i.e. after 5 laps of the blue progress bar, under the Windows XP title screen).

My C is an old IDE Maxtor disk and runs smoothly. I can use this PC (but without the 1TB drive) when I disable SATA 1/2 from the BIOS.

I read somewhere that this motherboard did not support SATA2 drives (and I was thinking that 1TB was maybe too much for the motherboard to handle!) so I even put the jumper on the disk so that it's being used as a SATA1 (lower transfer rates), but I still have the same symptom.

For the jumper configuration, see page 28 of
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda 7200.12/100529369b.pdf

I updated the motherboard's drivers using MSI Live Update 3, everything worked fine, I even flashed my BIOS to version 1.D0 using the Windows method from the same program, but to no avail. I am still stuck with the drive being recognized in the BIOS and the boot sequence freezing if I enable my SATA from the BIOS (so I need to disable it to boot basically).

What am I doing wrong? Must this drive become the boot drive at all costs? Shall I install Windows XP on it and boot from it? Or is there a way to survive with my actual boot drive (the old 250Gb Maxtor) and use the 1Tb as a data drive?

All help greatly appreciated!

 

[HappyBison]

One some motherboards it may help to set your 1TB hard drive to "None", but leave controllers enabled. This way your drive will be detected when Windows is up.
You could also try another SATA plug (if you have more).
It may be also a good idea to get the latest drivers for Nforce SATA controller from nvidia.com website.

The other option is to try another SATA PCI controller card which supports 48-bit LBA or higher.

 

[vancekic]

I tried setting the drive to none while leaving the controllers enabled, and it freezes even sooner (on the first few frames where it displays the Windows XP boot screen).

I got my nForce Sata drivers from the MSI Live Update, you think I should try nvidia?

Finally, tried the different plug, different port and same symptoms (and the disk is still recognized on the right sata port, as expected).

:-(

 

[HappyBison]

MSI Live Update probably stops updating when this board is no longer in production.
Nvidia always has the latest no matter what.

If you have a setting like "Compatible/AHCI/etc" for your SATA port you may want to play with it first before trying a new controller card.