Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

[sherpa25]

Hi,

Finally got my board and just setup my SSD w/ Win7-64bit (2x8GB GSKill RipjawsX), BIOS 7a (Optimized Settings, no OC), and installed 2 of my HDDs from my old system.
This is their configuration in Win7:
C: SSD (Plextor M5P 128GB) - ok, seen in Windows
D: HDD (ST2000 2TB) - ok, seen in Windows
E: BD drive (iHES112) - ok, seen in Windows
?: WD 500GB HDD - not seen in Windows

All drives are installed on Intel ports, none in the Marvell ports. Though not visible in Windows, I see the WD500GB drive in the BIOS under SATA (actually I also see it when I run Macrium Reflect in Win7). I noticed though under Boot Options in the BIOS that all the 3 drives recognized by Win7 appear with 'UEFI' above their names except for the WD500GB drive. I have AHCI enabled too.

Any ideas why the drive doesn't appear?

So far installed INF chipset, USB3, Realtek Audio, LAN.

In relation to the drivers, what are these other drivers for:
IRST, MEI, Marvell_SATA, Marvell_SATA, Marvell_Storage_Util, PreMarvell_bootdisk

I ask because when I run Xpress Install earlier (w/c installed almost all drivers automatically) using App Center, then rebooting, I suddenly kept getting BSODs at the Windows login screen. Fortunately I had an Image Backup (thanks much to profJim) prior to running Xpress Install. So after restoring c/o the winPE rescue DVD, I started again installing the drivers I mentioned above, but now manually one at a time. These drivers I now downloaded from the GB site, and didn't use the CD that came w/ the board. I'm not sure now w/c of those remaining I would need, or should still install, as I'm afraid the BSOD might recur.

Those are the drivers I haven't installed yet. Perhaps this may be the reason why, under Device Manager, I have one unrecognized device under Other Devices entitled 'PCI Simple Communications Controller'.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[wazza300]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

try typing disk management into start/search

look in there to see if the hdd appears,if so click it and initialise it or assign a drive letter to it and it should then appear in windows

or start
right click my computer,manage,storage,disk management

[profJim]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

Does your WD 500GB hard drive have any partitions?
Have your tried swapping the WD 500 cable to one of the other working sata3 ports?
Run windows Disk Management and see if your WD 500 drive is recognized and what its status is.
Do you have a wireless lan module or add-in card connected to your system? If yes, is the driver installed?

We need detailed information about ALL OF THE HARDWARE in your system.

We can best help you after you create a detailed hardware list in the System Specs portion of your
forum profile http://forums.tweaktown.com/profile.php?do=editprofile at the bottom of the
profile page or in your forum signature http://forums.tweaktown.com/profile....=editsignature.
Be sure to include brand names and model numbers.

[sherpa25]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

Thanks a lot guys. It worked using Disk Management, and I just had to assign a drive letter. Funny though that it didn't show up under 'Disk Drives' in Device Management. Aren't they supposed to be the same? Anyway, thanks again.

Have to research on the other drivers. Any idea what 'PCI Simple Communications Controller' under Other Devices could be for?

BTW, I already edited my signature, how do I make it appear below my posts? So I also filled in my PC Specs, but that one seems to be working.

Update: From research, it might be related to IMEI. I'll try installing that driver next, but I'll backup a new image first to be safe.

[profJim]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

Sorry to hear that you solved your "missing" hard drive so easily.

From the last lines in post #3, click on http://forums.tweaktown.com/profile....=editsignature where you can create your forum signature and the information that you enter will appear at the bottom of each of your posts. You can use the Preview Signature feature to see what your signature will look like. Be sure to click the Save Signature tab when you are done. You can make changes to your signature at any time. You can quickly access the Edit Signature option from your Settings window which also also your Subscribed Threads with New Posts list.

I created my PC Specs list when this feature became available. I had created my forum signature's hardware list several years ago.

[sherpa25]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

You bet ya! I hope it's the last.

I'm done with MEI, and will now try IRST. Do I need this even if I only have 1 SSD (as I read it's useful for RAID). The last of the drivers would be the Marvell drivers. Saw 3 different sets in the Gigabyte site but they have no descriptions. Anyway, I'll keep searching.

Regarding the signature, seriously, I've updated it. I guess it's not updating...or my connection is dragging Maybe in my next few posts.

[profJim]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

Your forum signature will appear in all future posts after you have saved the signature settings.
All of your posts before you created the signature will NOT have your signature information.

I've deleted your double post.

[sherpa25]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

Thanks profJim!

[odiebugs]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

You bet ya! I hope it's the last.

I'm done with MEI, and will now try IRST. Do I need this even if I only have 1 SSD (as I read it's useful for RAID). The last of the drivers would be the Marvell drivers. Saw 3 different sets in the Gigabyte site but they have no descriptions. Anyway, I'll keep searching.

Regarding the signature, seriously, I've updated it. I guess it's not updating...or my connection is dragging Maybe in my next few posts.

No, you don't need to use RST unless you have a RAID array, but there are AHCI drivers in the RST drivers,. You should run a bench on the drive, using the MS driver (chipset AHCI), then you can try the RST AHCI driver and see if you get better performance, or better performance in the area you want, such as better read or writes or better 4k or higher.


As for the marvell, the reason there are three, one is a utility, one is the driver, and one is a Preinstall driver because the marvell can be run in RAID, so if you boot using the RAID you can install the driver at windows install. The driver is actually a installer that installs the AHCI driver, the Preinstall contains the RAID drivers. This is really only for XP, with win 7 and beyond there is no need to pre install any drivers anymore. But say you do use Marvell RAID, after win installs the driver, you use the Preinstall drivers to update to the newest drivers, or you can Preinstall just so it's the newest.

The only Marvell controllers that are true Sata 3 are the 9182, 9220, 9230, the rest are garbage, such as the 9128, 9172. They are better then nothing if you don't have any native ports left.

[sherpa25]

Re: Z87x-UD3H - new build, 1 drive not seen and other questions

Thanks for the information, odiebugs.

When I tried iRST, bench for my drives was generally faster. However I had one problem with copying large files (i.e. 4GB files or larger) where transmission speeds initially are fast but then slow down (from around 150MB/s to ??kb/s, then much later, causing the Copy window to show 'Not Responding'). That's w/ iRST 12.7.1.1000 installed (latest at the moment). Checking inside iRST prior to copying, SATA transmission initially shows 6Gb/s, then when the copying process slows down, checking/refreshing iRST for the drive then changes SATA transmission to 1.5Gb/s. I always have to reboot to reset the speed, and copying large files start again with good speed, then slows down again like before. It takes a few seconds to go down in speed, hence copying smaller files seem to be fine, perhaps because once it starts to slow down, the file transfer would have already finished.

Any idea if there's a problem with iRST?

For the true Sata3 controllers, I guess I won't have to worry about that since my only use for the Marvell ports would be for eSATA (since the 6 Intel ports are more than enough) and my eSATA drives are not fast as SSDs, so it won't really matter.

UPDATE 1: Now have iRST uninstalled and retried copying multiple, large files and it worked fine, though not as fast as with iRST. Hope it's just a glitch with iRST as the speeds were better.

OTOH, regarding eSATA ports, they worked twice without iRST, finally. But speaking too soon, now they don't again, after reattaching one. I'm still trying things out.

UPDATE 2: Drive in Startech eSATA seems to be working fine, whether I attach, use, detach, re-attach, etc. The one in the Astone enclosure doesn't, though it worked fine once earlier :(. Like there's poor handshake.