Question New Patriot 128 gb SSD's not seen by Win-XP (but are seen by Win-10) why?

[SummGuy]

I've connected a lot of SATA drives to various motherboards over the years and have never seen this behavior before.

I recently bought a 10-pack of Patriot 128 gb SSD's and none of them are "visible" on a PC running Win-XP. They show up in the BIOS as the system boots, but they don't show up in device manager or disk manager. XP boots from a 500 gb sata drive on this system, and other 128 GB drives (Lexar and Kingston) are seen no problem. The motherboard is an Intel socket-775 based CPU, sata interface on the board, no IDE interface at all. But in the BIOS I can select IDE, RAID, or AHCI for the sata mode, I have it set to IDE. When I want to clone hard drives I will use Norton Ghost 2003 (booted from a floppy) - but not in this case because Ghost can't see these SSD's either.

I've booted an old version of Acronis from a CD (and Clonezilla also from CD) and they can see these drives.

On another PC running Win-10, yes these drives are seen and can be initialized / formatted.

So why can't XP (and Ghost) see these 128 GB SSD's ?

Are there any tools I can download somewhere that can read exactly what's on these drives as they come out of the package, and maybe set a few magic bytes somewhere in a boot sector or MBR and correct this situation?

 

[SummGuy]

Looking at Patriot's website just now, is there a reason why they'd be saying that the OS compatability for these SSD's only goes down to Win-7?

O/S Supported: Windows® 7*/8.0*/8.1/10

Note the * for Win-7/8.0 what's that supposed to indicate?

Are there some SSD's that just plain won't work in IDE mode (but will show up during BIOS post) but must be set to AHCI in the bios to actually be usable?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

XP doesn't know what a SATA based drive is as it was introduced, lived its life, and was retired before SATA. As to the "*" just look in the notes for for the "*" (usually in a much smaller text) and read the note beside it.

 

[SummGuy]

I've never come across a motherboard (with on-board SATA) that had XP drivers that ALSO DIDN'T HAVE drivers for the sata controller. We're generally talking about boards with socket-478 and 775 intel CPU's.

Which means that in the BIOS the Sata interface can be set to "native" or "AHCI" instead of "legacy" or "IDE". I know it can get tricky when trying to INSTALL XP to a sata drive in AHCI mode (vs installing it when the drive is in IDE mode and then switching to AHCI after installation). I've even installed Win-98 on SATA drives using slip-streamed SATA drivers during the install while the drive was in AHCI mode (yes many socket-478 boards with on-board SATA did come with win-98 drivers that included the sata controller).

But in the current case I'm just adding this Patriot 128 gb drive as a second drive, with the sata interface set to IDE mode in the bios. Everything you read on the net says that all SATA drives will work in IDE mode. However, just now I'm seeing this on reddit:

"Yea so patriot kinda changed something with their “newer” drives. They used to work with no changes to bios, ide mode and all regular, now they don’t. You sadly need to get a new ssd for it to work. The Kingston 240 gig works."

and

"I have the exact same drive and the exact same issue. I have another ssd, Lexar, and that one works perfectly. The Patriot ironically worked perfectly for win98 but WinXP won’t recognize it no matter what I do. Tried playing with modes, used a m/b F6 disk - nothing."

Those 2 comments were posted in the same r/windowsxp thread 3 months ago...

And just looking at Kingston's website, product FAQ page:

What Operating Systems are supported?
Kingston SSDs are OS independent and will run on any system supporting a standard SATA interface.

Unlike what Patriot says about their P210 series SSD:
O/S Supported: Windows® 7*/8.0*/8.1/10

 

[beyondlogic]

I've never come across a motherboard (with on-board SATA) that had XP drivers that ALSO DIDN'T HAVE drivers for the sata controller. We're generally talking about boards with socket-478 and 775 intel CPU's.

Which means that in the BIOS the Sata interface can be set to "native" or "AHCI" instead of "legacy" or "IDE". I know it can get tricky when trying to INSTALL XP to a sata drive in AHCI mode (vs installing it when the drive is in IDE mode and then switching to AHCI after installation). I've even installed Win-98 on SATA drives using slip-streamed SATA drivers during the install while the drive was in AHCI mode (yes many socket-478 boards with on-board SATA did come with win-98 drivers that included the sata controller).

But in the current case I'm just adding this Patriot 128 gb drive as a second drive, with the sata interface set to IDE mode in the bios. Everything you read on the net says that all SATA drives will work in IDE mode. However, just now I'm seeing this on reddit:

"Yea so patriot kinda changed something with their “newer” drives. They used to work with no changes to bios, ide mode and all regular, now they don’t. You sadly need to get a new ssd for it to work. The Kingston 240 gig works."

and

"I have the exact same drive and the exact same issue. I have another ssd, Lexar, and that one works perfectly. The Patriot ironically worked perfectly for win98 but WinXP won’t recognize it no matter what I do. Tried playing with modes, used a m/b F6 disk - nothing."

Those 2 comments were posted in the same r/windowsxp thread 3 months ago...

possibly there drives only work with eufi bios

 

[CountMike]

possibly there drives only work with eufi bios

No, they can run just fine in Legacy mode and MBR.

 

[SummGuy]

No, they can run just fine in Legacy mode and MBR.

If they did, Patriot wouldn't say on the package that win 7 and win 8.0 might need drivers for them. And they wouldn't leave XP off the compatibility list.

 

[CountMike]

If they did, Patriot wouldn't say on the package that win 7 and win 8.0 might need drivers for them. And they wouldn't leave XP off the compatibility list.

It has nothing to do with BIOS in Legacy or UEFI mode or file system MBR or GPT. Drivers are installed in OS, not in BIOS.

 

[fzabkar]

@SummGuy, would you consider an experiment?

Connect a working 128GB SSD plus your Patriot SSD to your PSU. However, only connect the working SSD to a SATA port. Leave the Patriot disconnected, then boot to Win XP with your working SSD in IDE mode. Now disconnect the SATA data cable from you working SSD and connect it to your Patriot. Run CrystalDiskinfo to see if the Patriot now shows up.

 

[SummGuy]

It has nothing to do with BIOS in Legacy or UEFI mode or file system MBR or GPT. Drivers are installed in OS, not in BIOS.

Sata drives are not driver dependent.

You're confusing "legacy" with the type of bios (UEFI vs non-UEFI bios). That's not what I'm talking about. And you're bringing in the issue of how the drive is formatted (MBR or GPT) which again has nothing to do with this situation.

EDIT: Ok, I see that when you have a board in UEFI mode, you only seem to be able to use GPT unless you also select "legacy" in the bios so that you can choose MBR or GPT. I don't know why that selection is done in the bios vs the OS, I wouldn't think the bios would have or should have any influence over how the overlying OS chooses to format the drive. So I presume that in UEFI mode you really don't have a choice in whether the SATA interface is AHCI or IDE mode. It's going to be in AHCI mode. So you won't be able to test for this issue that I'm seeing.

With Sata, you can have AHCI, IDE, or Raid modes. Or - you did have those choices on non UEFI motherboards.

AHCI is sometimes called Sata or Native mode.

I probably don't have any UEFI motherboards, and if I did I wouldn't choose to use the board in that mode anyways if I was installing Windoze.

Maybe someone can answer the question -> Can you choose IDE mode for the SATA interface on a UEFI motherboard running in UEFI mode?

So the question remains - has anyone connected a Patriot 128 gb SSD, P210 series, or perhaps any size P210 series SSD to their system and seen it working when the SATA interface is set to IDE mode?

 

[SummGuy]

@SummGuy, would you consider an experiment?

Connect a working 128GB SSD plus your Patriot SSD to your PSU. However, only connect the working SSD to a SATA port. Leave the Patriot disconnected, then boot to Win XP with your working SSD in IDE mode. Now disconnect the SATA data cable from you working SSD and connect it to your Patriot. Run CrystalDiskinfo to see if the Patriot now shows up.

So you're saying let the motherboard boot up without the data cable connected to the Patriot SSD, and then after XP boots up then connect the data cable. I don't know how the motherboard (a NON-UEFI motherboard) is going to react to that. I don't know if the board does anything during POST to initialize the SATA ports and what happens when it doesn't see a drive during the startup.

EDIT: Hot plugging requires that the SATA interface be set to AHCI mode. IDE mode does not support hot plugging.

 

[CountMike]

You're confusing "legacy" with the type of bios (UEFI vs non-UEFI bios). That's not what I'm talking about.

With Sata, you can have AHCI, IDE, or Raid modes. None of them have anything to do with UEFI.

AHCI is sometimes called Sata or Native mode.

I probably don't have any UEFI motherboards, and if I did I wouldn't choose to use the board in that mode anyways if I was installing Windoze.

Maybe someone can answer the question -> Can you choose IDE mode for the SATA interface on a UEFI motherboard running in UEFI mode?

So the question remains - has anyone connected a Patriot 128 gb SSD, P210 series, or perhaps any size P210 series SSD to their system and seen it working when the SATA interface is set to IDE mode?

You got it all wrong and upside down. Legacy BIOS, also now called CSM (Compatibility Support Module) as opposed to UEFI mode for BIOS which emulates Legacy BIOS.
SATA interface is under SCSI standards and a variant of IDE/ATA standard. All UEFI BIOS also support IDE, AHCI and RAID modes. AHCI is and never was SATA, it's actually other way around. AHCI is one of SATA modes. IDE also means "Integrated Support Mode" and means that disk controller is on the HDD itself unlikeprevios disks like BFI and MFM which needed specialized controller in an ISA port on the MB using 2 ribbon cables to interface with HDD. You are confusing IDE with PATA and IDE , those have different meanings.
PATA mens Paralel ATA and SATA is Serial ATA. PATA uses 40 pin ribbon cable while newer and enhanced EIDE uses so called 80pim cable that also has 40 pins but each wire is shielded to ensure faster data stream. There usedto be some PATA SSDs at very beginning bur all reverted to SATA.
SATA comes in 3 generations. SATA or SATA1 allow for 1.5gb/sec (150MB/sec). SATA2 3Gb/sec(300MB/sec) and SATA3 6Gb/sec (600MB/sec). They are all up and down compatible.
SSDs with SATA interface are now mostly SATA 3 but can still work in SATA1 and SATA 2 interfaces.
SSDs need SATA in AHCI mode so TRIM and Garbage collection can work by command from OS otherwise they slow down and get overused fast which shortens it's lifespan but otherwise works fine.
SATA HDs and SSDs use exactly same interface and that's all BIOS cares about.
OSs like earlier LInux, Windows XP, Vista and W7 before SP1 do not"know" about Trim command so they treat SSD as mechanical HDD and will defragment it which is not good for SSDs. Windows 7 SP1 recognize SATA if it's in AHCI mode and instead of defragmentation use Optimization suitable for SSDs(encat TRIM), Those 2 SATA SSCs are no different than any other SATA SSD, compatibility is exactly same. Driver mentioned is for Storage controller on the MB, not SSDs.

 

[SummGuy]

You got it all wrong and upside down. Legacy BIOS, also now called CSM (Compatibility Support Module) as opposed to UEFI mode for BIOS which emulates Legacy BIOS.
SATA interface is under SCSI standards and a variant of IDE/ATA standard. All UEFI BIOS also support IDE, AHCI and RAID modes. AHCI is and never was SATA, it's actually other way around. AHCI is one of SATA modes. IDE also means "Integrated Support Mode" and means that disk controller is on the HDD itself unlikeprevios disks like BFI and MFM which needed specialized controller in an ISA port on the MB using 2 ribbon cables to interface with HDD. You are confusing IDE with PATA and IDE , those have different meanings.
PATA mens Paralel ATA and SATA is Serial ATA. PATA uses 40 pin ribbon cable while newer and enhanced EIDE uses so called 80pim cable that also has 40 pins but each wire is shielded to ensure faster data stream. There usedto be some PATA SSDs at very beginning bur all reverted to SATA.
SATA comes in 3 generations. SATA or SATA1 allow for 1.5gb/sec (150MB/sec). SATA2 3Gb/sec(300MB/sec) and SATA3 6Gb/sec (600MB/sec). They are all up and down compatible.
SSDs with SATA interface are now mostly SATA 3 but can still work in SATA1 and SATA 2 interfaces.
SSDs need SATA in AHCI mode so TRIM and Garbage collection can work by command from OS otherwise they slow down and get overused fast which shortens it's lifespan but otherwise works fine.
SATA HDs and SSDs use exactly same interface and that's all BIOS cares about.
OSs like earlier LInux, Windows XP, Vista and W7 before SP1 do not"know" about Trim command so they treat SSD as mechanical HDD and will defragment it which is not good for SSDs. Windows 7 SP1 recognize SATA if it's in AHCI mode and instead of defragmentation use Optimization suitable for SSDs(encat TRIM), Those 2 SATA SSCs are no different than any other SATA SSD, compatibility is exactly same. Driver mentioned is for Storage controller on the MB, not SSDs.

No, I'm right.

I anticipated that "legacy" meant the old BIOS, the old non-UEFI bios that we used to have what, 10+ years ago?

I'm also right that AHCI is one of the operating modes for the SATA interface, as is IDE, and that you choose these modes in the bios (at least the old "legacy" bios).

Since I don't use any systems that have UEFI bios, I am not aware as to what exactly they allow you to choose when it comes to the SATA settings. If they allow IDE mode then fine, they do.

But anyone that has a UEFI board and they've already installed their OS with SATA in AHCI mode then they can't test for SSD compabitility in IDE mode because their OS would not likely boot if they changed their SATA settings to IDE mode.

Trim has nothing to do with the situation I'm seeing.

The question remains. Can these Patriot SSE's be "seen" by the OS (ie Windows) when the SATA interface is set to IDE mode? As I just said, this might not be easily testable for those that have their systems running in AHCI mode.

 

[CountMike]

No, I'm right.

I anticipated that "legacy" meant the old BIOS, the old non-UEFI bios that we used to have what, 10+ years ago?

I'm also right that AHCI is one of the operating modes for the SATA interface, as is IDE, and that you choose these modes in the bios (at least the old "legacy" bios).

Since I don't use any systems that have UEFI bios, I am not aware as to what exactly they allow you to choose when it comes to the SATA settings. If they allow IDE mode then fine, they do.

But anyone that has a UEFI board and they've already installed their OS with SATA in AHCI mode then they can't test for SSD compabitility in IDE mode because their OS would not likely boot if they changed their SATA settings to IDE mode.

Trim has nothing to do with the situation I'm seeing.

The question remains. Can these Patriot SSE's be "seen" by the OS (ie Windows) when the SATA interface is set to IDE mode? As I just said, this might not be easily testable for those that have their systems running in AHCI mode.

The old BIOS became Legacy when UEFI came out to distinguish them. CSM emulates old/Legacy BIOS in it's firmware and acts exactly same. Windows 7 SP1, W8/10 and 11 can BOOT in CSM/legacy mode if installed as UEFI with disk as MBR but not other way around.
Once again, those 2 Patriot SDDs are no different than any other SATA SSD like Samsung, Kingston, Lexar or literary hundreds or thousand other makes and models or even HDD. If SATA HDD works, so will any SATA SSD. AHCI mode is enhanced SATA, nothing more, just like EIDE was for PATA interface.

 

[kanewolf]

I haven't seen this asked in this thread .... Could it be a 4K sector vs 512 byte sector issue ?

 

[SummGuy]

The old BIOS became Legacy when UEFI came out to distinguish them. CSM emulates old/Legacy BIOS in it's firmware and acts exactly same. Windows 7 SP1, W8/10 and 11 can BOOT in CSM/legacy mode if installed as UEFI with disk as MBR but not other way around.
Once again, those 2 Patriot SDDs are no different than any other SATA SSD like Samsung, Kingston, Lexar or literary hundreds or thousand other makes and models or even HDD. If SATA HDD works, so will any SATA SSD. AHCI mode is enhanced SATA, nothing more, just like EIDE was for PATA interface.

I'm not arguing about the definitions.

I'm asking if anyone else has the ability (or if their OS has the ability) to "see" these Patriot P210 SSD's IF, IF the SATA interface is set to IDE mode.

If I'm right, and these Patriot P210 drives require AHCI sata mode, then these would be the first SATA drives *EVER* to have this requirement / handicap.

 

[SummGuy]

I haven't seen this asked in this thread .... Could it be a 4K sector vs 512 byte sector issue ?

There are at least 2 other SSD's that I have - a Lexar and Kingston, both 128 gb, that are compatible with SATA-IDE mode and can be "seen" by Windows XP and Norton Ghost 2003 (booted off a floppy disk). I also have 1TB SATA HDD's (several different manufacturers) that also work fine in IDE mode.

Yes I'm aware that 4k sector size came out what- 10 years ago? It might be a possible explanation here but I can't believe that somehow all the SATA drives I have that are less than 5 years old are still somehow 512-byte sector size.

Have ALL SATA drives sold today fully moved to 4k sector size? Today? One year ago? Several years ago?

Could it be a fluke that this Patriot P210 128 GB SSD that I have is the first for me to have 4k sector size?

Would this cause the SSD to not even show up in Windows XP device manager?