Asus P5K Deluxe Cannot find the SATA Hard Drives

[Stomper]

I have 3 hard drives:

1) SATA (250 GB)
2) SATA (80 GB)
3) IDE (80 GB)

Both the SATA drives are brand new and working perfectly one has Windows Vista on it the other is formated and blank but the SATA drives are not detected in the boot menu, only the BIOS menu and windows is able to detect them. The Boot menu says it found only 1 of the IDE 80GB hard drive but it fails to detect the 2 SATA drives and says "Detect Drives Done, No any Drives found " apart from the IDE.

I've flashed the BIOS to the latest version from Asus. I've tried various SATA settings with no success. I can see my SATA drives in the BIOS so it is recognising it. I've also tried disabling the JMicron RAID controller but this hasnt fixed the problem.

The SATA hard drives show up on "my computer, computer management, device manager and also on System Information" but then when I try to run certain programs like Ghost, Acronis True Image , Easy Data recovery then those programs are unable to find/detect my SATA hard drives either even in dos startup mode.

I have read over the web for various solutions but I dont know which is correct to fix this problem, from what other have said......

1-This is because the IDE port on the mb is controlled via a 3rd party controller (mine for example is jmicron). it controlls the IDE port and the 2 sSATA ports on the back. if you connect something to the IDE port on the MB, you will get a device detection screen with the device name. this can be turned off in the BIOS under device settings (where you can turn on/off firewire, NIC ports, etc.). Look for "storage controller". Just make sure its not the SATA controlled from the southbridge..

2-Buy a drive converter SATA – USB to plug it into your SATA drive in your pc and then plug it into your usb device on the back of your pc and boot Acronis and copy data. This works because it wont detect the hard disk as a SATA drive but will detect it as a usb device and it will show as a normal hard disk...

3-You have to make the floppy with the 3rd party driver - either the promise driver or the Via drivers, depending on which you choose to use. They're on the CD that comes with the Mobo.
Once you do that you proceed as AeX says to install them.

4- Some software run in Windows or from the DOS floppy are not guaranteed to recognize SATA drives, even in single controller situations (as opposed to RAID controller). Often, the computer BIOS process of mapping a SATA drive will be the key. If the BIOS treats SATA drives as if they are IDE or SCSI drives, they may be able to interact with them. Otherwise, the drivers that your normal OS environment uses, not the BIOS, may be providing access that certain software will not be able to
duplicate.

Which are true to this problem, and any further help is apreciated.

 

[GhislainG]

Is SATA configured as IDE, RAID or AHCI?

 

[Stomper]

Its configured as IDE

 

[GhislainG]

I'm not familiar with that motherboard, but I assume that the BIOS is similar to the P5Q Deluxe. What's the boot device priority? In that same tab, there should be another meu item to select the order of your hard disks. By default, the IDE is the first one (at least it is on a P5Q Deluxe) and that's why it shows up in the boot device priority. If you change which hard disk is the first one, then you'll be able to boot from that disk.

 

[Stomper]

My Boot device priority is set to"

1st cd rom
2nd floppy
3rd hdd

and my Disk Drives is set to:

1st Drive : SATA (250 GB)
2nd Drive: SATA (80 GB)

The IDE is not even listed in there.
The problem isny not being able to boot from the SATA HDD's. they work just fine, the problem is the boot menu does noit detect them or list them and various softwares also fail to detect them both in dos mode and in windows.

 

[jeteryankees22]

Well the boot menu not seeing them is probably due to the boot.ini file and what is mapped to it. If the XP load does not "know" about the vista then it wont see it. However, if you have a vista load with a boot.ini file and that is set to boot first idk why it's not just booting to that?

 

[GhislainG]

This part is confusing: "... but the SATA drives are not detected in the boot menu, only the BIOS menu and windows is able to detect them. The Boot menu says it found only 1 of the IDE 80GB hard drive but it fails to detect the 2 SATA drives and says "Detect Drives Done, No any Drives found " apart from the IDE."

Can you explain what you mean by "boot menu" and "BIOS menu"?

Is SATA configured as seen in section 4.3.5 of the manual?

Is the J-Micron controller enabled and in IDE mode (section 4.4.5 of the manual)?

Unfortunately the manual doesn't show where you can change the order of your hard disks.

Have you tried Acronis in safe mode? It's the only mode that detects my SATA drives on the P5Q Deluxe.

 

[Stomper]

Can you explain what you mean by "boot menu" and "BIOS menu"?

BIOS MENU - when I hit the "del" key when I first turn the pc on it goes into a dos type setting titled BIOS SETUP UTILITY which shows me the name, model and capacity of my SATA HDD's indicating that they are operational and recognised.

BOOT MENU - When I first turn my pc on, the very first text that comes on on the black dos type screen displaying specs and other information fails to detect my 2 SATA HDD's and only says that its found the IDE HDD. When I unplug my IDE HDD then it dosent find any HDD and gives me the message saying "Detect Drives Done, No any Drives found " but it still continues booting to the Desktop.

WINDOWS MENU- Once the pc is finished loading to the Windows OS, the SATA Hard Drives seem to be fully operational unless I run certain software like Acronis or other Data Recovery software which then fails to find any SATA drives, it only finds the IDE Hard Drive.

My concern is perhaps theres a link between the failure to detect the SATA drives in the Boot menu and teh failure to detect by certain software

Is SATA configured as seen in section 4.3.5 of the manual?

Yes.

Is the J-Micron controller enabled and in IDE mode (section 4.4.5 of the manual)?

No, I disabled the J-Micron seen in (section 4.4.6) to see if that would fix the problem, but all it did was now it skips all that spec info shown at the Boot Menu, but it hasnt fixed the problem its only hidden it.

The IDE mode in BIOS is set to "Enabled"

Have you tried Acronis in safe mode? It's the only mode that detects my SATA drives on the P5Q Deluxe.

EDIT: I just tried this now but it dint work. I appreciate all your help though and for checking the P5K manual. Thanks

 

[GhislainG]

If the drives are available in Windows, then they were properly detected (though not necessarily displayed at boot.

You wrote "When I unplug my IDE HDD then it dosent find any HDD and gives me the message saying "Detect Drives Done, No any Drives found " but it still continues booting to the Desktop." In order to boot to the desktop, it had to find a hard disk, unless you boot from another device.

In the boot menu, in addition to "Boot Device Priority", you should see "Hard Disk Drives" when more than one hard disk is connected. I had a similar issue with my P5Q Deluxe when using AHCI where I couldn't see the SATA hard disks, but the latest BIOS fixed it.

Can you disable Quick Boot and check if it helps? Have you tried with only one of the SATA hard disks?

 

[jitpublisher]

When you get the message about no drives, it means that it is not detecting any IDE drives, disable the IDE controller and this will go away.
It is most likely not displaying the SATA drive finding sequence.
Make sure quick boot is turned off, and your splash sceen is disabled to see everything going on during POST.
Have you set the drives to "active" under disk management?

 

[conquerz]

Did the original poster fix this issue? I am having the same problem. I can see the sata disk in bios. I can priorities it from there. I can even boot from this disk and work with the disk from within windows. However...

The disk does NOT appear in the list of detected drives during boot up. Yes I did install Windows by disconnecting all other drives and formatting it during Windows Installation process.

My motherboard is P5K Premium. I just bought a new Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue SATA 7200 32MB (WD10EALS). (more info)

 

[preparat]

I got a similar issue.
My WD Black 1TB is detected by bios and shows up as working properly in device manager, but it doesn't show in my computer and I am unable to use it...
I have a Win 7 64 bit and I have connected the disk as an expansion to already installed system.
Any suggestions?
Cheers in advance.

 

[preparat]

Just found a solution ;-)
http://www.asus.com/uk/support/Knowledge-Detail/1/22/P5K_PremiumWiFiAP/B2EED94B-A58D-05F5-0DAF-864FC6F34066/
It's a solution to a similar issue, but give it a try.
It has worked for me.