Sata 2 hdd not working on these 2 mainboards

Placing a jumper on a certain pin pair is one method of forcing a SATA II HDD to communicate at the slower original SATA rate with an older controller. HOWEVER, it is NOT a standard. Both Seagate and WD use this method on many of their drives, but as far as I know Samsung does NOT. So I do not know what effect your jumper has on the Spinpoint F3, but it was NOT for slowing it down. Take that jumper off.

Go to the Samsung website and look for info on how to do this. I believe their system is that you download and run a software tool to set the drive to the older 1.5 Gb/s communication speed. I am not sure how you can do this in your case with a HDD and controller that don't talk to each other yet, but Samsung should be able to tell you how to get the job done.

Do you have any ideea why my hdd isn't working properly on the Abit KN9 mainboard (Sata 2)?

Thanks

Which OS are you using on thes systems? Do you have the bios set for AHCI or IDE? XP doesn't have native sata drivers so they require the driver disk, but only if the drive controller is set to AHCI. Windows 7 has native sata drivers so doesn't require the sata driver disk.

I haven't tried to install it using the driver diskette with the sata drivers since it was visible in the bios and the mb and hdd were sata 300.

Anyway why is it disappearing from bios? Since I should see it at anytime in here. After the restart it disappears from bios. I presume it should be always visible no matter it has something installed on it.

This has nothing to do with having to install sata drivers. It's the version of windows that makes the difference.



This I'm not sure about.

I think you were on the right track in the first place - you just took a wrong turn. You started out suspecting that the SATA II (more correctly, SATA 3.0 Gb/s) HDD was not communicating properly with the older SATA 1.5 Gb/s controller on the mobo. That is possible, and it fits the symptom that the BIOS "sees" it at first, then cannot detect it later. But you attempted to fix that by installing a jumper on pins on the back edge of your SpinPoint F3. While that is the right way to adjust a WD drive, the Samsung you are using requires a different adjustment process using a software utility you must download from the Samsung website. You should NOT install any jumper on the Samsung's back edge pins.

Once you do that, the BIOS ought to be able to detect the HDD properly. Once that is working, then you need to set a couple things in BIOS Setup. First is to verify that the SATA port you are using is Enabled. Next, look nearby for a place to set the SATA Port Mode. Options usually are IDE (or PATA) Emulation, SATA, AHCI, or RAID. You choice depends on what OS you are installing, your own preferences and what resources you have in the machine.

1. IF you plan to install Win 7 or VISTA, set to AHCI (or SATA). These two OS's have AHCI drivers "built in" and can use such devices to install on and to boot from.

2. IF you plan to install Win XP, and IF you have the resources to install drivers from floppy disk, then also set to AHCI (or SATA). Make sure you have a functioning floppy drive in your system, and that you have copied the required AHCI (or SATA) driver(s) for your machine onto a floppy diskette. Early in the Install process you will see the prompt to press the F6 key if you want to install drivers from that floppy drive; do the installation, then return to the main process and complete the Install.

3. IF you plan to install Win XP but do NOT want to install driver(s) from floppy (or cannot), use the handy work-around available in most BIOS's. Set the SATA Port Mode to IDE (or PATA) Emulation. In this mode the BIOS makes the actual SATA HDD behave exactly like an older IDE unit which XP understand completely and it all works with NO need to install extra drivers. You lose a few features of the new AHCI devices, but you avoid installation problems.

In either of these cases, once you make your setting, don't forget to Save and Exit from BIOS Setup. Now you boot from the Install CD and, if you chose Option 2, ensure you have your diskette with drivers available in the floppy drive unit.

Your motherboard uses a VIA VT8237 southbridge:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_A/A7V600X/

According to Wikipedia, this chipset has problems with 3Gbps SATA drives:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

"According to the hard drive manufacturer Maxtor, motherboard host controllers using the VIA and SIS chipsets VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420, VT6421L, SIS760, SIS964 found on the ECS 755-A2 manufactured in 2003, do not support SATA 3 Gbit/s drives. Additionally, these host controllers do not support SATA 3 Gbit/s optical disc drives. Users with a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s motherboard with one of the listed chipsets should either buy an ordinary SATA 1.5 Gbit/s hard disk, buy a SATA 3 Gbit/s hard disk switchable to 1.5 Gbit/s, or buy a PCI or PCI-E card to add full SATA 3 Gbit/s capability and compatibility."

FWIW, the following article talks about a firmware bug in respect of AMD's SB850 southbridge, but it should have no bearing on your problem:
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Known_issues

Found the Samsung utility I spoke of. See this page:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b...

Note that there are several versions. One type, after unzipping, will create a floppy diskette you can boot from to make the change. Another type will unzip to yield an .iso image file that you must then burn to a CD to make a bootable CD to run the utility from. For this last type you must have CD burning software like Nero that can burn an .iso image file to CD.