[SOLVED] Why are my Sata drives not detected when I switch to newer, better fitting cables?

[ImWolf]

MSI K9NBPM2-FID MB
2 WD 500G SATA Hard Drives
1 SG 40G IDE Hard Drive
1 Teac CDR Drive

The Sata cable connecting my C drive (WinXP OS) to the MB has always been a loose, unreliable connection and has caused many system freezes and crashes now.

Recently I bought new Sata3, and then Sata2 cables in an effort to remedy this problem. Even though the newer cables fit the HDD socket very snug and secure, neither of my Sata HDD's are detected when I switch cables.

My MB is advertised as having Sata2 ports, while both the WD drives are Sata3. Every article I can find out there however claim that none of this matters and any cable should work even if the cable isn't rated to supply the xfer rates that the other components are capable of.

What do I try next?

 

[rgd1101]

and the old cable still works?

 

[ImWolf]

and the old cable still works?

Yes..... although "work" is a matter of opinion since I keep having crash issues with them. But I always need to switch back to these old cables to use the machine.

I don't recall if the cables came with the HDD's or the MB, but I have bought 2 sets of replacements now and they will not detect the drives.

 

[ImWolf]

I just called technical support at both MSI and Western Digital, described my problem, and asked them if I should be shopping for Sata cables specific or produced by the MB manufacturer, or the HDD maker....

Both of the techs told me it shouldn't matter. All cables are basically the same and come from somewhere in China, and that all cables should be upward and downward compatible. The tech at WD did say I would be better off choosing a Sata 3.0 cable since that would match the HDD version.

So, these phone calls were of no help.

Perhaps I should not be calling technical support ppl on April Fools day?

 

[ImWolf]

UPDATE: (Solved)

I e-mailed my local computer shop and explained the above, and although he was familiar with loose Sata cables, he did not come across this problem where replacement cables wouldn't detect drives suddenly and suggested I update the Bios if possible.

There was only one newer version of the Bios available for this old MB which was described as "fix issue with PCI pre-fetch", which is Greek to me..... but I flashed the Bios with the slightly newer version..

First thing that obviously changed was the machine now screams through post! The splash screen flips by so fast I can barely see the memory check, devices found, nvram..... etc. Then after I selected WinXP from the boot menu it also loaded at least 4 times as fast as previously!

At this point I swapped out the Sata cables that always came loose for the new Sata 3 cables I had bought, and everything worked fine.

Unfortunately, this did NOT solve another nag I've been dealing with for quite a while described here:

Question - XP Home re-install cannot find serial ATA devices

MSI K9NBPM2-FID MB 2 WD 500G SATA Hard Drives 1 SG 40G IDE Hard Drive 1 Teac CDR Drive About 18 months ago I re-Installed XP Home with a "slipstream" CD created (and used before) with Nlite. I had also hit F6 during install and provided the additional SATA/RAID drivers just for good measure. I...

forums.tomshardware.com

Eventually, I'm now confident I'll get that worked out as well.... :b

 

[Achaios]

UPDATE: (Solved)
"fix issue with PCI pre-fetch", which is Greek to me..... but I flashed the

Pretty sure that's not Greek but English.