Disappearing hard Drive?

walterb

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Dec 28, 2011
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Ok so I put together this new computer (windows 7 pro 64 bit) with an Intel board (DX79SR). I moved my old SATA drives to the new machines, and have a new SATA 3 drive as the boot drive (C:\) . My old M: Drive keeps disappearing from windows. Its not in Windows explorer, or in the Disk Management area. When I reboot, it comes back. Then as I’m trying to copy stuff off of it (don’t trust it anymore) , it disappears again. When I boot, it comes back. Another thing is that if a “restart” the BIOS hangs. If I shutdown and startup cold, the computer boots up fine (except for the disappearing M: drive).
Is this a disk controller issue, or an HD drive problem?
I really don’t want to have to rip the computer apart and ship the motherboard back to newegg. Please give me some good news.. :D
 

John_VanKirk

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walterb

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Dec 28, 2011
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thanks. I read the thread, and here s what I did. The boot (c drive) was already on SATA 0. I had the "bad" drive (M) on something Intel refers to as SATA A (Gray Sata Connectors from a discrete storage controller 6/GB). the "bad" drive is an old SATA drive and perhaps something wasn't backwards compatable. What is a discrete storage controller and what should i plug into those (DVD/CD/Blu Ray)?

It seems to be working now after 10 minutes as I'm typing. It hasn't disappeared yet. :D

thanks for the help.
 

John_VanKirk

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Hi Walter,

Check pages 15 & 22 of your user manual. There are two SATA 3 (Blue) connectors and 4 SATA 2 (Black) connectors comming off the PCH controller. The 2 Gray SATA 3 connectors come off a Marvel 9128 chip added for the additional SATA 3 ports not supported natively by the PCH. That chip controller has to be enabled in the BIOS and the Marvel drivers installed from the CD or downloaded from the website. Can check in Device Manager to see if they are installed properly or have a yellow exclammation point in front of them. Those latest Marvel drivers might need to be reinstalled.

Any case, don't use the additional controllers unless you have used up all the PCH SATA ports.

The theoretical "ideal" way to connect your SATA devices are the OS drive on the bottom Blue port (SATA 3) nearest the MB, your blueRay or DVD on the first bottom or top Black ports (SATA 2) closest to the blue ports, and the older M drive on the later lower bottom or top black (SATA 2) ports closest the gray ports. Then if you get another SATA 3 storage drive, it could be connected to the upper Blue SATA 3 port. That's theoretical - but probably best now.

Hopefully that will get you going.
 

walterb

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Dec 28, 2011
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thanks! yes, it seems to be working fine now.