[olug] Weird SATA behavior

[Dan Linder]

In the past I've had two IDE drives not like working together (even when on
different IDE cables), unless the combination was "just perfect". In those
cases (much like yours below), the addition of another IDE device to the mix
(i.e. a CD drive or two on one or both cables) seemed to make them play
again.

Try flashing to the latest BIOS first - it could be a known bug, and since
the Linux OS can see it I'd say it's the most likely answer.  Unless you're
intending to add additional drives to fill up all your SATA ports, I
wouldn't sweat it too much if the BIOS flash doesn't work.  Assuming you
don't need the ports right away and can boot from a different drive, at the
price of drives and motherboards today, you'll spend way more in time
troubleshooting this than it's worth.

It sounds like you've tried most everything - I'd chalk it up to a bug and
move on.

Dan

On Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 09:55, Obi-Wan <obiwan at jedi.com> wrote:

> I spent most of last night trying to track down some really weird
> behavior with a new SATA drive in my system.
>
> I'm running an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe mobo that's almost 2.5 yrs old.
> It's got six SATA and one IDE port.  Previously, I booted off an
> IDE drive and had two other internal SATA drives attached (one for
> /home and one for backups.
>
> Last night, I pulled one of my USB backup drives out of its enclosure
> and moved it into the tower to act as a new backup drive.  It's a
> 1.5 TB WD green (EADS) SATA drive.  I plugged it into my 3rd SATA
> port.  After that install, my system would run through the BIOS,
> but wouldn't recognize any of the hard drives in order to boot.  It
> just sat there with a cursor flashing on an otherwise empty screen.
>
> The BIOS recognized all the drives just fine.  If I booted off a
> 9.10 live CD, I could see all the drives, mount them, list their
> contents, etc.  I even partitioned & formatted the new backup drive
> from the live CD.  Try to boot off an internal drive again, and no
> go.  Each of the backup drives (both old & new) is also bootable,
> but none of them would work.  I tried swapping power & SATA cables
> to no avail.
>
> After much experimentation, I found that this behavior existed when
> I had the new drive plugged into SATA ports 3 or 4.  When I plugged
> it into ports 5 or 6, it booted off the internal drives just fine.
> The existing drives are in 1 and 2.
>
> I have three SATA controllers on the mobo, and each controls two of
> the drive ports.  My initial thought was that the second controller
> (ports 3 and 4) was shot, but if that were the case, why would I
> be able to see them when booting off the live CD?  Remember that I'm
> trying to boot off the IDE drive, which is unchanged in any of these
> SATA configuration scenarios.
>
> The mobo BIOS is a little old, but thanks to yesterday's discussion,
> I now know how to update it using the Windoze flash utility.  That
> will happen soon.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> --
> Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
>   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
>     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
>       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins
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>



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