Hard drive not detecting.

[Nick_Black]

I'm shure it's just something simple that I overlooked...

with my parents computer (Presario S6200CL, look up the specs if your curious)

I wanted to hook up a sata HDD (WD1600AAJS) i got it all plugged in and such, but the Bios doesn't detect it, not does Windows (XP) and I can't find any drivers or anything... any Idea's

[slaveofconvention]

I havent looked at the PC specs, but depending on how old the PC is, the SATA ports might be on a seperate RAID controller - you'll have to watch at startup to see if anything RAID related comes up - you may have to tell the Raid controller bios (different to the main bios) to set the drive up as a JBOD drive before windows will see it.

MIght also be a case of having to turn the SATA ports on in the main BIOS - the RAID controller might be disabled in there too

[Nick_Black]

odd. I was gonna try those suggestions, but to help me, i simply put "display boot information at boot" (or whatever it was) and all of a sudden it works...

so thanks for your help! (evens thought it was something else i guess...)

[slaveofconvention]

If it works, don't knock it :)

[x88x]

..weird..

I have seen a few older MBBs, especially in OEM systems, that shipped with the SATA controllers disabled in the BIOS. Turning on the display information may have turned it to auto?

[Nick_Black]

nope.. because after a few hours of file transfer the computer froze (nothing new, there's a reason I'm backing up files) and I restarted, the boot info screen was still up, but the hard-drive disappeared again >.< maybe it's the magic of tbcs, maybe now it'll work again now i've posted here again :p

[x88x]

Hmm...considering what happened, are you sure the HDD is good? That might be your problem.

[Luke122]

Bad cable maybe, or a poor connection? PSU might be insufficient.

Try swapping the sata cable to test. If that doesnt help, maybe disconnect an optical drive or something to test if it's a power issue..?

[Nick_Black]

ok, I did all that, and I think the problem is the hard-drive.. or more precicely, the data transfer rate. i tried another sata HDD, (the exact same model) and it did not work. but when I tried my last one, it worked every time, and the only real diffrence I noticed was that the one that worked was a 1.5GB's HDD, and the others were a 3GB's HDD. i tried diffrent jumper settings, but they didn't work..

does anybody know how to set a WD1600AAJS hard-drive to run at a 1.5GB's speed?

thxs for all your help so far!

[x88x]

Ahhh, yeah, I remember having to do that with my old fileserver.

Looks like this is what you need:
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/P135125/jumpers.htm

[slaveofconvention]

There is usually a jumper on the drive to set the speed down - or there used to be....

Yup - checked WD's site and hopefully this is what you need...

http://www.slaveofconvention.com/imagestore/forums/wdjumper.jpg