Ga-x58a-ud5 not detecting SATA Disks after reboot

[nhasian]

All parts are brand new. PC was working fine for 3 days then this morning after the POST it says:

"A Disk Read Error has occurred
Press Control-Alt-Del to restart"

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 motherboard with latest bios version F5
6 gigs corsair ram
P128 Corsair SSD
2 TB Western Digital EARS Hard Disk
24x Asus DVD Drive
1Gig PNY Nvidia 250 Video Adaptor
750w true Antec power supply
Windows 7 Professional

observations:
when i clear the cmos and load optimal defaults, in the bios where it lists 8 lines for all the SATA devices, it shows the P128 Corsair at SATA0 and the western digital 2TB drive & Asus dvd at SATA7 and SATA8. Once I save and exit however, next time i go into the bios it shows NONE for all SATA devices. I think thats why i'm having trouble.

troubleshooting:

i've done ram and cpu burn in tests, all passed.
i've disconnected all sata devices but am unable to boot from a Ubuntu 10.04 USB Thumbdrive. it just hangs on the Ubuntu loading screen. I'm not sure if that is normal for this model of motherboard, or if its hanging because of the motherboard issue i'm having.
i've also updated the bios to the previous version F4. All my SATA devices were set to ACHI.

I hope i just missed something and someone can provide me with a clue to get back into my operating system. otherwise i may have to replace the motherboard.

Thanks in advance,

nhasian

 

[ekoostik]

When running in AHCI mode I don't see my harddrives in BIOS either. After updating the BIOS version, did you choose Load Optimized Defaults?

 

[bilbat]

When you activate either AHCI or RAID for a controller, it is no longer 'seen' by the main BIOS and its IDE 'drive discovery'; that function is taken over by the controller's 'option ROM', a seperate 'chunk' of BIOS that is also responsible for RAID structural initialization - perfectly normal...

 

[nhasian]

thanks that explains why the devices would disappear from the bios but still show up when they are being polled during the bootup process. I still dont know why the data on my windows partition disappeared. i did a fresh install of windows and will keep a close eye on it the next few days before i deploy it.

 

[nhasian]

Best answer selected by nhasian.