Question New Patriot 128GB SSDs are not seen by Windows XP but Windows 10 sees them; why ?

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SummGuy

Jan 17, 2025
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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 SSDs and none of them are "visible" on a PC running Windows XP. They show up in the BIOS as the system boots, but they don't show up in device manager or disk manager. Windows XP boots from a 500GB SATA drive on this system, and other 128GB 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 SSDs 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 Windows 10, these drives are seen and can be initialized / formatted.

So why can't Windows XP (and Ghost) see these 128 GB SSDs ?

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?
 
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?
 
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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
 
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SummGuy said:
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...
Click to expand...
possibly there drives only work with eufi bios
 
@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.
 
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CountMike said:
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.
Click to expand...

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?
 
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fzabkar said:
@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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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SummGuy said:
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?
Click to expand...
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.
 
CountMike said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
SummGuy said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
CountMike said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
kanewolf said:
I haven't seen this asked in this thread .... Could it be a 4K sector vs 512 byte sector issue ?
Click to expand...
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?
 
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Windows can report the logical and physical sector size of the drive responsible for a partition/volume via the "fsutil fsinfo sectorinfo x:" command (where X is the drive letter). The same information is also reported via the ATA Identify Device command.
 
Ok I have an update.

Summary: On 2 different systems, the Patriot P210 128 gb SSD is not visible / accessible to the running OS if the SATA port is set to IDE mode.

Details - system 1:

I have Win-7 Pro SP1 installed on a WD800JB 80-gb IDE hard drive on an IBM Thinkcenter PC (this box would date to around 2004/2005 but Win-7 was installed probably 2015). The motherboard has an IDE connector and a couple of SATA connectors. The motherboard naturally is not UEFI.

In the BIOS setup of this PC is this:

Devices
IDE Drives Setup
- Parallel ATA: Primary or Disabled
- Serial ATA: Enable or Disable
- Native mode operation: Automatic or Serial ATA

Printed on-screen for that last option is this help description:

"Choose which channels will be placed in Native mode. In Automatic mode, only the serial channel is placed in Native mode, and only if necessary. Note: Some OS do not support native mode."

With the "native mode operation" set to Automatic, the Patriot SSD is not detected by Win-7. I wait for 10 minutes and Win-7 has not detected the drive. I go into Device manager and Disk manager, the drive is not there.

I reboot, go into the bios, and change "native mode operation" to Serial ATA, reboot the box, and Windows detects new hardware, installs something and then the Patriot SSD is visible, but not initialized. I have to choose MBR or GPT first to be able to do anything in Disk Manager, but I don't do anything at this point because I've established that a bios setting does influence the visibility of this SSD under Win-7 SP1. Again I suspect that this is the fundamental IDE vs AHCI issue. IBM seems to refer to AHCI as "native mode Serial ATA".

Details - system 2:

A socket 775 Intel based motherboard, no IDE interface on the board, it has a floppy drive interface and 6 sata connectors. Windows XP pro SP3 is installed on a 500 gb Seagate sata HDD. In the bios the SATA mode is set to IDE. Attaching the Patriot SSD and powering up, the SSD is not visible to XP. It doesn't show up in Drive management or Device Manager. Disconnecting the XP drive and booting Norton Ghost 2003 from a floppy same thing - no drives detected.

Change the SATA setting in the bios to AHCI, re-attach the XP drive, yes XP boots up - because I had already installed the SATA drivers for XP. But YES - the Patriot SSD is now visible. Reboot with the Ghost floppy - yes, Ghost sees the SSD.

Now - I clone the 500 gb XP HDD to the 128 gb Patriot SSD using Ghost. The XP drive is only using about 8 gb of drive space, so this is possible, destination volume is re-sized. Clone is made, AND it boots. The 128 gb Patriot SSD does boot just fine into XP.

There is something different about these Patriot SSD's that nobody will ever see if they are attached to a sysem with UEFI bios or with SATA ports set to AHCI. These drives can't be used to make clone backups of old / legacy systems or used with IDE-SATA convertor boards on systems that don't have SATA ports.
 
I think you've been very thorough and it's pretty clear Patriot did something to disable IDE mode compatibility in their later SSDs.

The big clue is Patriot says the SSD may require a driver in Win 7 and Win 8 but not 8.1, then does not offer one for download. New for Windows 8.1 was the included Microsoft Standard SATA AHCI controller driver, and before that all the way back to Windows XP you had to load the F6 AHCI driver for your SATA controller (usually from Intel or AMD) in order for the Windows installer to even see the drive.

Of course many Windows 10 capable boards do not even have AHCI mode such as those using ICH7 southbridge, and these Patriot SSDs just will not work with such boards. Which is a shame as TRIM does not require AHCI.
 
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Early on I thought about the power plug. I was using a power supply that didn't have SATA power sockets - I was using an adapter-converter that went from 4-pin molex to SATA and so it didn't have the 3.3v line. There are plenty of times I've had to use an adapter on many different SATA HDD's and they've always worked.

I've googled around about this 3.3v line and it seems others have asked if that line has ever been needed by any sata drive, and the answer seems to be no.

In any case, I did swap the power supply with one that has the full SATA power connector, and that didn't change anything. This is still an AHCI vs IDE issue for this Patriot SSD.
 
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