Help with drive number enumeration to correct channel for SATA HDD?

[to1337ca]

I need help to fix drive number enumeration to correct channel for SATA hard disk in Windows. I am not sure if this is the correct subforum, but I suspect that this is both a problem with the motherboard and Windows.

I am in desperate need of help to solve an odd hardware problem.

I have a Gigabyte GAX38DQ6 motherboard with 2 hard disks installed. Before the upgrade, these disks were enumerated in Windows Vista correctly with Disk 0 as the BOOT DISK that was attached to SATA 0 channel on the motherboard and Disk 1 as the DATA DISK that was attached to SATA 1 channel on the motherboard.

After I upgraded my BOOT DISK hard disk to a SSD (I imaged the content over for this upgrade, so no reinstallation of Windows was done), Windows now enumerates the SSD BOOT DISK to Disk 1 and my DATA DISK to DISK 0. I want this to change back to the old enumeration.

I have read a number of threads posted elsewhere, none of which gave a working solution:

http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...t-vs-bios.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937251

What makes my case different is that the enumeration CHANGES RANDOMLY on each reboot, so sometimes the disk enumeration would be one way and sometimes the other way, even when there is NO further new hardware or driver upgrade.

I need the enumeration to be correct because a backup application (which I must use for reasons I won't elaborate here) uses disk enumeration to identify which drives are to be backed up. Thus, the randomly changing enumeration breaks the application.

As the above threads are quite old, I am wondering if there has been any new solution. Can someone help?

 

[scout_03]

i would suggest to boot only with the ssd connect to the 0 sata port then try a win repair to fix the boot order also check your bios if your ssd is first boot then add the other hdd to see if there is any change in boot ,did you put the ssd as active primary drive

 

[to1337ca]

Appreciate the tips. Here is what I have already done before:

Already tried to boot to SSD only (with no other storage devices connected) to try to "retrain" Windows to register thee SSD as Disk 0 (so it can record this in the Windows registry). Yes, the SSD is connected to SATA 0 port.

BIOS already has SSD as the first boot order.

SSD is already set as active primary drive.

When I add in another HDD, Windows will sometimes show the SSD as Disk 0 (which is what I want) but sometimes it will not. Worse yet, even after it correctly shows SSD as Disk 0, when I manually reboot (warm boot, not cold boot), it will sometimes change the disk designation. I am puzzled as to why there is no "memory" of the disk designation.

Help?

i would suggest to boot only with the ssd connect to the 0 sata port then try a win repair to fix the boot order also check your bios if your ssd is first boot then add the other hdd to see if there is any change in boot ,did you put the ssd as active primary drive

 

[scout_03]

if you put the hdd on another connector on the board does it does the same thing like sata 2 or 3

 

[to1337ca]

Here are my current drive configurations according to BIOS

SSD (this is the problem SSD and where Windows is installed, my drive C) - SATA 0 master
HDD1 - SATA 1 master
SSD2 - SATA 2 master
DVD drive - SATA 4 master

As such, they are already on separate connector.

Unfortunately, I cannot put HDD1 or SSD2 as SATA 0 slave because the data cable cannot be negotiated in my case to connect the drives in this order.

 

[scout_03]

ssd2 is not having a os on it could you connect it to sata 1 so sata 0 is the os then the other sdd as sata2 and the hdd sata3 dvd drive sata 4 also check board manual for bios settings if you need to put them in ide ao ahci for the ssd to work correctly

 

[to1337ca]

The drives are currently all connected using IDE mode. In fact, when I first set up the system, I had set to use only IDE and never made the change to ACHI because of the complicated hack required to enable it after the OS was installed.

I will try to switch the SSD2 and HDD. Will get back to you in about an hour. In the meantime, can you explain why you think this solution will work?

 

[scout_03]

not shure it will work but that wil help us to find if the sata controller on the board is having a issue

 

[to1337ca]

No difference. Same problem. Out of five boots, only one boot had the SATA enumeration correctly done. The others were not. The only consistency / trend I saw is that the HDD (and not SSD2) always takes precedent as Disk 0 whenever the enumeration is incorrect.

not shure it will work but that wil help us to find if the sata controller on the board is having a issue

 

[scout_03]

then i would write to gigabyte about this and ask whythis happens, this could be a sata port controller issue you could ask for a rma

 

[to1337ca]

Thanks for trying. The motherboard is a few years old, and the BIOS and drivers all stopped updating long ago.

Sadly, it appears that this is a dead-end.

 

[scout_03]

did you check the motherboard battery for voltage and try cmos for a bios reset we never it could be usefull