Hello, I have been trying to find solution for (too) long now and I hope you will be able to help me...
Motherboard: GA-M56S-S3 with AMD X2 proc
DVD drive SATA
My old HDD Maxtor seems to got a fatal error, nothing I could do to boot into Windows. It is an IDE HDD and it is recognized by BIOS. It contains important data and I already bought another HDD to install Windows again and try to save data from the faulty hard drive. I hope the data is still there... but enough of the story, here is the problem.
I bought a WD 1TB Caviar HDD. BIOS does not recognize it, all blank. All SATA ports are working, because it always recognizes DVD drive, wherever I connect it. I tried with IDE Auto Detection feature, but still no success. I have noticed however, that if there is no drive in SATA connector, it refreshes in one second. If I try with the Channel, which does have the drive, it takes 6-7 seconds to tell me there is no drive there. The drive itself seems physically ok, and is turning, visually working.
I understand there is some problem with SATA drivers when XP are to be installed, however I don't believe this is the case here? I do have a XP installation DVD with slipstreamed SP2 and SATA driver, but this seems to be more serious as BIOS itself doesn't see the drive.
I think I have tried most of the BIOS settings I read on the forum, some of them of course are missing, because it is different model. In particular, I am not sure, how to add drive specifications manually in this motherboard as it was suggested by someone. There is no clear option how to do that.
If flashing BIOS is a must, I will try to do that, however I don't have any floppy at the moment so would prefer to test other solutions first. Can flashing BIOS be done also from USB key in this BIOS? I have read something about required formatting of the key and I hope that cheap USB keys do have that formatting.
This is the closest help I could find on WD site.
1. The first reason I think is not valid here, I believe that this is switched off with NV SATA Controller option, which I have enabled?
2. The second one I don't know, but it doesn't look like it. Onchip SATA mode is set to IDE, not RAID or AHCI.
3. Also not true, I was able to install XP with slipstreamed drivers on a laptop.
Legacy USB storage detect Disabled or enabled, same thing. I have also tried with WD Lifeguard Tools, however wasn't able to properly run it. I read somewhere that the problem is with SATA drives, that Lifeguard doesn't see.
Painful, I have to say. But board looks ok, drive looks ok, there has to be a solution? Thanks for reading so far.
Motherboard: GA-M56S-S3 with AMD X2 proc
DVD drive SATA
My old HDD Maxtor seems to got a fatal error, nothing I could do to boot into Windows. It is an IDE HDD and it is recognized by BIOS. It contains important data and I already bought another HDD to install Windows again and try to save data from the faulty hard drive. I hope the data is still there... but enough of the story, here is the problem.
I bought a WD 1TB Caviar HDD. BIOS does not recognize it, all blank. All SATA ports are working, because it always recognizes DVD drive, wherever I connect it. I tried with IDE Auto Detection feature, but still no success. I have noticed however, that if there is no drive in SATA connector, it refreshes in one second. If I try with the Channel, which does have the drive, it takes 6-7 seconds to tell me there is no drive there. The drive itself seems physically ok, and is turning, visually working.
I understand there is some problem with SATA drivers when XP are to be installed, however I don't believe this is the case here? I do have a XP installation DVD with slipstreamed SP2 and SATA driver, but this seems to be more serious as BIOS itself doesn't see the drive.
I think I have tried most of the BIOS settings I read on the forum, some of them of course are missing, because it is different model. In particular, I am not sure, how to add drive specifications manually in this motherboard as it was suggested by someone. There is no clear option how to do that.
If flashing BIOS is a must, I will try to do that, however I don't have any floppy at the moment so would prefer to test other solutions first. Can flashing BIOS be done also from USB key in this BIOS? I have read something about required formatting of the key and I hope that cheap USB keys do have that formatting.
This is the closest help I could find on WD site.
1. The first reason I think is not valid here, I believe that this is switched off with NV SATA Controller option, which I have enabled?
2. The second one I don't know, but it doesn't look like it. Onchip SATA mode is set to IDE, not RAID or AHCI.
3. Also not true, I was able to install XP with slipstreamed drivers on a laptop.
Legacy USB storage detect Disabled or enabled, same thing. I have also tried with WD Lifeguard Tools, however wasn't able to properly run it. I read somewhere that the problem is with SATA drives, that Lifeguard doesn't see.
Painful, I have to say. But board looks ok, drive looks ok, there has to be a solution? Thanks for reading so far.
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