SATA ports 2,3,4 and 5 not detecting anything!

[f03n1x]

Part 1 of my problem:

Hi guys, so my problem at the moment is I have a solid state drive running with the OS i wanted to eventually upgrade my space due to my solid state being only 100gb anyways,
I connected my old HDD (it had my OS on it previously but I reinstalled it onto my solid state) and when i restated my computer it was really slow so I thought I may have short-circuited my hard drive so I disconnected bought a new hard drive and I still get the same problem. The problem is I went to BIOS and changed the settings to AHCI and again a slow startup but this time it will load the OS but basically freeze. So not knowing what to do I tried RAID(AHCI), IDE and AHCI again just to be sure but again nothing works, IDE in fact doesnt detect any of them and decides to run the OS from the CD drive. So I'm left with wondering maybe when I installed the OS on my solid state the first around I may have had the wrong settings that would prevent me from adding a hard drive down the line.
I guess if nothing else I can just reinstall my OS I did backup my SSD onto an external.

Hopefully you guys understand my situation from the muddled up sentences I just typed lol.

Oh and before I forget I'll add my specs:

SSD:119GB Samsung 830 series
HDD:Western Digital Blue Edition 1TB Sata 3 internal hdd 7200rpm
HDD:Western Digital Black Edition 500gb sata3 7200rpm 32mb cache
OS:Windows 7 Ultimate
MoBo:Gigabyte p67a-ud3 ddr3 2133+ UD3

if anything is left out I happily add it to the list.

My First Solution:

I would go for a new OS installation in you SSD -- just disconnect the HDD cables, and install the OS with just the SSD connected -- make sure it is set to AHCI, and it set as a primary boot device and drive.

After the installation is done, just re-connect the HDD cables again, then use the software Samsug provided you (Magician) to make the tweaks, and you´re done!

The SSD will be your C drive.

I hope it helps!

My First Reply to jemm:

Thank you!

I was assuming that was what I was supposed to do but you know it's always good to clarify.

Also if you could maybe clear this up for me what does X.H.D do exactly? it seems to have something to do with adding new HDD or SSD but without the need for configurations but I wasn't really sure, I thought it might help later on but who knows.

Again thank you for the clarification on what to do, if you can't tell me about X.H.D that's fine, I guess its time to reinstall Windows!

Part 2 of my problem 🙁 :


So I thought I had everything sorted and again jemm thank you for answering my question and your solution would have been the best if not for something I found out later on.

So I did a clean install of Win7 on my SSD everything went well installed drivers using the cd I got with my motherboard, installed samsung Magician wasn't sure what tweaks I was supposed to do so I just optimised my drive. Also before installing Win7 I made sure that AHCI was the selected BIOS settings.

Then I run into the first problem I had last time the two HDD's I connected via SATA cables did not come up as detected, then Win7 loads and loads and yeah forever loading so I recheck the cables the Power cables and redo the process of turning on and waiting for Win7 to load. Then I tried something that determined my problem I unplugged my CD drive that was plugged into SATA port 1 and plugged my newest HDD into that port with a new SATA cable I recently bought I then plugged my CD Drive into SATA port 2. So it detects my SSD and HDD but not my CD drive! I'm assuming somehow I must have made a mistake and somehow made 4 of my 6 SATA ports fail, so I guess unless someone has a way to test the SATA ports other than just plugging something like a CD drive in and seeing if it detects, I'm stuck with two drives and no optical. Until of course I can either pay to have my motherboard looked at or if not just upgrade my computer motherboard and all.

If anyone knows some way I'd really appreciate it and also if I'm supposed to start a new thread sorry I've kinda noticed submitting this counts as an answer rather than a question.

So far I've formatted my old HDDs (failed to mention I connected 3 HDD not 2! Sorry this means anything different)

Formatted my new HDD and connected to SATA port 2 with an old HDD connected to SATA port 1 and my SSD connected to SATA port 0 and it doesnt detect it at all, even though connected to SATA port 1 it functions properly. Apart from formatting my old HDD's I really do not know what to do and I'm really stuck.

If anyone could help I'd appreciate it.

upon further research about my Motherboard I found this:

"http://www.gigabyte.us/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=986"

which basically says due to 4 of the ports not working well showing poor performance you can get a replacement by end of April,2011. Though due to me not checking their website, I only find out now...

I submitted a ticket about my problem the fact that I spent the equivalent of a motherboard (my motherboard was $270NZD) on various parts including a new PSU, A new HDD and even a new SATA cable, but due to me not knowing I could have stayed with my original parts and just gotten a replacement motherboard.

Well I'll stop my bickering but hopefully I get a replacement, or if not I'll just save up for a new Motherboard and maybe just new everything while I'm at it.

 

[TenPc]

What is your total power output of your PSU (make and model)?
Video card specs (more than one?)
Ram 2133, how many sticks, what volume (brand)?
Overclocked anything?

Not sure about the Sata cable connectors, some motherboards seem to prefer Sata drives to be on 0 or 1 and the SSD on last one bu then it's sometimes the other way round.

The white SATA connections might be good for SSD, the blue one being for standard Sata hdd, and cd/dvd. I'm not sure that you can have Sata and SSD in the same blue ones, or white ones. The white ones are 6gb p/s and the blue ones are 3gb p/s

I think that before you install anything, you get the combination right, if you change the hdd after install to a different sata connector, it changes the path of the OS drive and will make load times slower as well as general performance unless you know how to change the path to the other connector in the registry or other.
"1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3_0, SATA3_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
* When a RAID set is built across the SATA 6Gb/s and SATA 3Gb/s channels, the system performance of the RAID set may vary depending on the devices being connected."
refer link
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3651#sp

 

[f03n1x]

What is your total power output of your PSU (make and model)?
Video card specs (more than one?)
Ram 2133, how many sticks, what volume (brand)?
Overclocked anything?

Not sure about the Sata cable connectors, some motherboards seem to prefer Sata drives to be on 0 or 1 and the SSD on last one bu then it's sometimes the other way round.



The white SATA connections might be good for SSD, the blue one being for standard Sata hdd, and cd/dvd. I'm not sure that you can have Sata and SSD in the same blue ones, or white ones. The white ones are 6gb p/s and the blue ones are 3gb p/s

I think that before you install anything, you get the combination right, if you change the hdd after install to a different sata connector, it changes the path of the OS drive and will make load times slower as well as general performance unless you know how to change the path to the other connector in the registry or other.
"1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3_0, SATA3_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
* When a RAID set is built across the SATA 6Gb/s and SATA 3Gb/s channels, the system performance of the RAID set may vary depending on the devices being connected."
refer link
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3651#sp

Sorry I really didn't see your reply due to being a little annoyed at not knowing about my motherboard.

However I'll answer your questions:

PSU is 650W its a Cooler Master GX 650W Bronze
My GPU is Radeon HD 5670 and just the one
My Ram is 1 x 4gb Strontium and 2x Kingston (Not sure if they have proper names atm I'll have to find the receipt for it) so 12gb in total.

I know for a fact that the two top white ports are in fact 6GB/s and the bottom 4 are 3GB/s I have my SSD plugged into Port 0 the very first one and that SSD has never had any problems whatsoever hell even if I plug any HDD into either of the first two ports they work fine.

The thing about my Drives are 2 of the 3 have been formatted I'm in the process of formatting the 3rd hell even if I have to format everything again I will lol but I just want my HDD space again for the last few months I've been living on just the SSD due to thinking I needed a new PSU (which was 550W btw) but I never ever knew about the recall they wanted after finding that the 4 last SATA ports were indeed poor but i can now guarantee that after a certain amount of time they end up not detecting anything really.

Well anyways TenPc thanks for the concern about my question if I didn't type in GA P67A-UD3 B2 recall out of curiosity I would have never found out that news. Let's hope they at least think about replacing my motherboard even though its 2 years old and they probably stop production of the replacement.

 

[TenPc]

"My Ram is 1 x 4gb Strontium and 2x Kingston "

You can't have mix-matched ram, especially with Strontium. Remove the Strontium then boot up.

550 Watt might seem adequate with one hdd but you got 4 hdd's. Also, 550 watts is really not that good, it's only about 44 amps on the combined 12 volt rail. You'd be lucky to have more than 480 watts total output.
Make and model of the PSU?

The link you gave for the Gigabyte Intel dilemma, it states that a performance drop will occur with tyhe use of both (or just the) Sata 2 ports, also mentioed a utility to use to check your ports. It doesn't refer the ports to stop working altogether.

Only have one Sata drive with the SSD drive and see if it apears in the bios as being connected.

The sata cables are usually pink(red), with a black plastiv end that fits into the slots.. The yellow cables are for pcmia cards to a modem, they have a metal clip on their ends. What colour are your SATA cables and do they have a metal clip?

 

[f03n1x]

"My Ram is 1 x 4gb Strontium and 2x Kingston "

You can't have mix-matched ram, especially with Strontium. Remove the Strontium then boot up.

550 Watt might seem adequate with one hdd but you got 4 hdd's. Also, 550 watts is really not that good, it's only about 44 amps on the combined 12 volt rail. You'd be lucky to have more than 480 watts total output.
Make and model of the PSU?

The link you gave for the Gigabyte Intel dilemma, it states that a performance drop will occur with tyhe use of both (or just the) Sata 2 ports, also mentioed a utility to use to check your ports. It doesn't refer the ports to stop working altogether.

Only have one Sata drive with the SSD drive and see if it apears in the bios as being connected.

The sata cables are usually pink(red), with a black plastiv end that fits into the slots.. The yellow cables are for pcmia cards to a modem, they have a metal clip on their ends. What colour are your SATA cables and do they have a metal clip?

I guess I'll take a look at that. Though Strontium and Kingston being different brands the ram speed and specs are pretty similar and I wouldn't know why that would cause my problem about my SATA ports not being connected.

550W was my old Wattage for my previous PSU though after the sluggish performance of my HDD plugged in with my SSD i decided to leave the SSD plugged in and have been using that since. My new current PSU has 650W its a Cooler Master GX 650W Bronze. Can't really remember if I still have the box for my old PSU since I just moved house it might have been trashed.

The link I gave about the performance is yes definitely poor but I'm assuming that after 2 years it may have dropped so much that its not even working properly. I could actually have due to the faulty-ness of my motherboard and maybe just age could have caused it to stop working. I checked the ports and they show nothing connected when nothing is connected for the 4 SATA ports but the annoying thing about that is I can't connect anything at all CD-Drive SSD or HDD to those ports because as soon as I turn on my computer It doesn't start up Win7 at all.

As I said for the last few months I've only used my SSD and it appears fine.

My SATA cables are red for my SSD with black on the ends with metal clips. I have Blue cables for everything else except for the new HDD I bought a new cable, though its black I didn't realize colour mattered I just thought it would be for if you wanted to get cable management sorted as in red for SSD and Blue for HDD but yeah they all have metal clips.

Also I went to my supplier and they obviously knew the replacement for my motherboard is not being made anymore and apart from the email I sent Gigabyte about my fault I have nothing else that I can do related to my supplier apart from buy a new Motherboard.

Oh I was wondering if maybe updated my BIOS would do anything to my ports not sure but I guess its something to think about.

Oh yeah forgot to mention for the two SATA ports any combination of SSD and HDD, HDD and other HDD, SSD and CD-Drive, HDD and CD-Drive, and either HDD or SSD or even CD-Drive Solo all work fine. Just again nothing is detected after those ports.

 

[TenPc]

Although SATA cables with metal clips seem to be the standard for desktop PC's nowadays (colour is just for different types of drives for identification), I'm a bit wary about using them, they are for connection between a PCMIA card to a modem) and are not sure whether the metal clips will actually do any harm to a desktop moherboard. I only use the non-clip ones.

It's just not reccomended to use mixed brands (even if they are same voltages and speeds), also you are only using one stick of the Strontium. 12gb is not going to give you much better performance, 8gb is just as good.

Well, everyone seeems to be updating their bios and think they are getting a better outcome, might be worh the shot. I've only done it once, about 10 years ago and wrecked my motherboard hahaha but that was along time ago.

As for the combo of paired drives, it might be that the Intel fault is that you can only use a mix od 2 drives.

PSU is 650W its a Cooler Master GX 650W Bronze is a great choice.

It is a mystery as to the bothersome dilemma.
You might want to consider keeping this rig, as is, with 2 drives, then go get another PC that can take more drives. I got 10 PC's (TenPC) an though storag is a bother, I got 3 PCs in my room and use a kvm swtich box with a monitor. One Pc has Vista (this one), 1 x PC has XP, and the other can be any of the other ones I choose to use from the storage room.

 

[f03n1x]

Although SATA cables with metal clips seem to be the standard for desktop PC's nowadays (colour is just for different types of drives for identification), I'm a bit wary about using them, they are for connection between a PCMIA card to a modem) and are not sure whether the metal clips will actually do any harm to a desktop moherboard. I only use the non-clip ones.

It's just not reccomended to use mixed brands (even if they are same voltages and speeds), also you are only using one stick of the Strontium. 12gb is not going to give you much better performance, 8gb is just as good.

Well, everyone seeems to be updating their bios and think they are getting a better outcome, might be worh the shot. I've only done it once, about 10 years ago and wrecked my motherboard hahaha but that was along time ago.

As for the combo of paired drives, it might be that the Intel fault is that you can only use a mix od 2 drives.

PSU is 650W its a Cooler Master GX 650W Bronze is a great choice.

It is a mystery as to the bothersome dilemma.
You might want to consider keeping this rig, as is, with 2 drives, then go get another PC that can take more drives. I got 10 PC's (TenPC) an though storag is a bother, I got 3 PCs in my room and use a kvm swtich box with a monitor. One Pc has Vista (this one), 1 x PC has XP, and the other can be any of the other ones I choose to use from the storage room.

Wow thats a lot of PC's lol I guess I could take it out and just buy the same Kingston brand and have it installed or just stay with 8gb it probably doesnt really matter. The Bios thing though I don't think I'd have a problem since it has dual bios from what I read its a bios backup sorta thing but hey I guess I could just leave it as is and just buy another motherboard. I however don't have the funds to make a brand new computer I'm at university (I'm actually a Bachelor of Computing and Information Sciences student) so this will be my computer down the line, and as for that I guess since my CPU socket size is fairly common in Motherboards and type is relatively new I can just get a new motherboard and have everything put in that with my all my HDD's and such.

The bios thing was just something I wanted to ponder but I mean if its just comes down to my motherboard's faulty SATA ports being stuffed then well bad luck on my part.

Oh yeah the metal clips could have been a maybe to the problem I have but I mean swapping the ones that do work with the ones that don't seem to change any outcome oh how I wish it was that easy though lol.

Well TenPC I guess if my problem isn't really solved thank you for trying your best to help me with it. If I do get a response from Gigabyte I'll let you know chances are its what my Supplier said but who knows they maybe generous.

Oh and if I ever have enough spare parts down the line to make a couple computers I may as well from what My lecturer was talking about for my class about E-Waste reusing instead of in a trash heap.

Oh something I just realized I havent actually tried installing my OS on my HDD and unplug my SSD and change the Bios settings back to I guess IDE not sure if it is going to work but I guess I could give it a try in the weekend, I would say tomorrow but I enjoy doing programming on my computer rather than my University ones. But again its another 'maybe' and I hope it works situation.

 

[TenPc]

There is more than 10 million CRT in PC "cemetary's", more than 10 milllion discarded computers all over the world, taking a few from the roadside or a dumpster is good for the environment, just don't break your back carrying them home lol.

I've ever only bought one PC and that was back in 1989, it cost me $2000, had a 20mb hdd, 256mb of ram, 1mb video card, and Windows 3.1, I didn't get Windows 95 until 1998. I didn't have a sound card until 1999, only relied on the built-in speaker for my sound/audio, dos games didn't require sound cards. All other PC's since then have come from the roadside. I use discarded parts for them. It's only been the past 5 years where I have had to fork out money for hardware, and have spent in excess of $3000 for assorted parts like video cards, hdd's, PSU,s, ram etc

The AHCI mode is different for many motherboards, my Dell E520 only uses an AHCI bios, doesn't allow for hdd mode.

I've done programming with VB6, it's better to use a PC that is not used for other things like games, programming does use a lot of cpu grunt and hard drive resources for temp files, even though the final exe can be as low as a few kb.

It's a shame we couldn't get a better result for the Question, though.

 

[f03n1x]

There is more than 10 million CRT in PC "cemetary's", more than 10 milllion discarded computers all over the world, taking a few from the roadside or a dumpster is good for the environment, just don't break your back carrying them home lol.

I've ever only bought one PC and that was back in 1989, it cost me $2000, had a 20mb hdd, 256mb of ram, 1mb video card, and Windows 3.1, I didn't get Windows 95 until 1998. I didn't have a sound card until 1999, only relied on the built-in speaker for my sound/audio, dos games didn't require sound cards. All other PC's since then have come from the roadside. I use discarded parts for them. It's only been the past 5 years where I have had to fork out money for hardware, and have spent in excess of $3000 for assorted parts like video cards, hdd's, PSU,s, ram etc

The AHCI mode is different for many motherboards, my Dell E520 only uses an AHCI bios, doesn't allow for hdd mode.

I've done programming with VB6, it's better to use a PC that is not used for other things like games, programming does use a lot of cpu grunt and hard drive resources for temp files, even though the final exe can be as low as a few kb.

It's a shame we couldn't get a better result for the Question, though.

Well I guess that would if it were a different country but I think for me being in New Zealand its probably a lesser value I haven't actually seen any CRT's lying around anywhere lol. I have two screens both old LCD flat screens I bought second hand. I never had a brand new computer other than a laptop my parents bought me years ago which was actually stolen strangely enough, my previous computer I bought was from an online auction for about $300 it had some very basic specs 1gb ram, 1gb graphics card not even sure of the brand lol, had windows vista but downgraded to xp because of the specs outdated-ness. The one before that was really ancient probably not as ancient as your $2000 computer lol but i know it was running Windows 98 or something random until I decided to install Windows XP on it. Oh and considering my daily use of my computer until I could enough parts for a new motherboard and such I'd probably use this computer more for programming than anything in recent years all I did in my spare time was fool around on Blender 3D though I did play games I spent way more time making 3d models rather than gaming, well compared to everyone I know.

Yeah well I guess if I had to this computer could be my Programming computer and if I could save up for another PSU since I don't really trust my old 550W (oh it was Great Wall by the way, not sure how trustworthy it was since my supplier doesn't even have it in stores anymore) I could use 2 of my 500gb hard drives and probably the CD-Drive that isn't being used, all that leaves is the motherboard, graphics card (the one I have is I guess decent but probably outdated compared to most high-end games, though I never really did play anything like Battlefield) or I could put that in my gaming computer and get a new graphics card just for rendering and such if I ever get serious about 3d modeling/design.

Yeah the Bios for my motherboard I'll probably just leave as is, for now, I mean it still works has enough space to at least install my main programs that I use so I'm happy well anything more than the 100gb on my SSD is good enough really.

Again for the question I guess oh well. It can't be helped if it was faulty to begin with unless of course I saw that notice about my motherboard and got a replacement 2 years ago lol.