Internal SATA 300 hard drive problem?

[SIG_Fiend]

I'm about at my wits end, so I figured I'd post this here just in case someone may happen to have the answer. I've been in the electronics industry for many years, and usually I'm very good at troubleshooting and fixing issues like this. Though this particular issue is being a real pain.

Here's my specs to start off:

-XP Pro SP2
-Athlon 64 3500+
-Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
-No other SATA devices connected, so the SATA hard drive is the only one
-Was using hard drive as a storage drive only and not a primary/boot/OS drive

I recently got a Seagate 500gb internal hard drive, model number ST3500641AS. This was roughly ~3-4 months ago. I set it up and it has been working fine up until a few weeks ago. All of a sudden, one day the thing would no longer be detected in the BIOS/Post on startup. The weird thing is, if I had the drive connected, even though it wouldn't be detected, XP still wouldn't start and would suffer a BSOD on startup. Even weirder than that is, if I disconnected the drive from the board, all of a sudden XP works and boots just fine. Keep in mind, I was only using this SATA drive as a secondary storage drive, so it had nothing to do with the OS, MBR, etc. In fact, I am currently posting this from that very computer. To make things weirder than that, my other computer has another SATA300 Seagate hard drive (a 200gb). That hard drive works fine in the other computer, in fact I was using that computer up until a couple days ago before deciding to try this one again. Strange thing is, even that SATA hard drive will not be detected in the BIOS/Post on this particular computer!?! WTF. Now, I've thought long and hard about this, and at no point did I mess with any settings in XP or the BIOS. It just stopped detecting the SATA drives completely at random one day. One day I shut it off, next day I turn it on and all of a sudden the SATA stuff doesn't work?! Now I've gone through the BIOS and quadruple checked all the settings. I've made sure that when I was trying the SATA drive that I did not have anything set to RAID, and I tried using both SATA ports 1 and 2 at the same time (I have 4 SATA ports though) as well as using only one, and even using only one and disabling the other in the BIOS. Nothing works and it still has the same problem. If either SATA drive is connected (1 is a known good drive), XP won't boot and suffers a BSOD. Drive disconnected, XP works fine. I'm hoping there is something simple and obvious I'm overlooking but, I've tried everything I can think of short of buying another computer. lol

 

[nalioth]

Check your cables?

Does the "known good" SATA drive work in the afflicted 'puter with the same cable? With a different cable? Same cable - different mobo connector? different cable - same mobo connector?

You need to check all the permutations you can to diagnose the problem.

 

[accordingtoome]

how much juice is your PS pushing?

 

[SIG_Fiend]

Check your cables?

Does the "known good" SATA drive work in the afflicted 'puter with the same cable? With a different cable? Same cable - different mobo connector? different cable - same mobo connector?

You need to check all the permutations you can to diagnose the problem.

That's the annoying thing is I've done everything I can imagine. Nope, I tried the exact same cables with the known good drive and it still doesn't work in this computer. Just to verify, I put the drive back on the other computer and it still works just fine. I've now tried all 4 SATA ports, and tried every single SATA cable and power cable I have here, but no change. Since they're not even being detected in the BIOS, I'm thinking there is something up with the mobo itself, though everything else works fine which is weird.

I have a 430w PS, so I should be just fine in that area.

 

[accordingtoome]

well its good that AMD MO's are so cheap as that sounds like the problem. i asked my work computer geek that was just here his opinion and he said the same thing.

 

[nalioth]

It does sound like the SATA controller may be going finicky on your mobo.

 

[lonewolf23c]

Sounds like you have an issue with the MB. I had a SATA Internal HDD that did the same thing in my old computer, it works just fine in my new computer so after a few other drive tests in the old computer I came to the conclusion that the SATA ports in my old computer were bad.