Trouble adding SATA drive to a predominantly IDE machine

[greg3305]

I am trying to add a Maxtor 200GB SATA/150 drive to an existing machine to use as storage space. The machine already has three IDE hard drives, controlled by a PCI controller card because of the 137GB limitation. My optical drives are using the on-board IDE channels. I'm trying to add the SATA drive to the motherboard's on-board SATA slot.

However, the drive is not detected in the BIOS. Windows Device Manager also lists the following error message for the VIA SATA RAID Controller (my motherboard's on-board SATA): "This device cannot start. (Code 10)"

Why might this problem be ocurring? I have the driver for the on-board SATA properly installed, as well as the latest BIOS revision.

The configuration of my system's drives are as follows:

OnChip IDE:
Primary Channel: Lite-On DVD Writer (Master)
Secondary Channel: Benq DVD Writer (Master)

Promise Ultra100 TX2 IDE Controller Card (PCI):
Primary Channel: Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB (Master, Boot), Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB (Slave)
Secondary Channel: Western Digital Caviar SE 160GB (Master)

One thought I had - might the on-chip SATA controller be conflicting with the IDE controller card I have in the PCI slot?

 

[Aprox]

Well, these types of questions can be tricky. I personally had a huge problem with SATA with my first drive. Before I speculate on your problem, we need to know some more info.

What mobo are you using?
Does your mobo support SATA raid?


When you state that windows says that "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" That makes me think there is a driver problem, you say you have them properly installed, that might be worth double checking.

 

[greg3305]

Motherboard is an ECS KT600-A. It supports SATA RAID. The manufacturer's page for the board is here: http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?DetailID=360&MenuID=24&LanID=0

 

[Aprox]

Ok, well based on the age of the Mobo I would say the solution to your problem is very similar to one I had. First of all however we need to fix the issue with your hardware not being properly detected.

Have you tried uninstalling the drivers for your SATA then reinstalling the latest version?

One solution to the SATA drive detection besides getting your controller to work properly might be to define a RAID array for the single drive. I know this sounds bizzare since RAID implies atleast two hard-drives. However with the older Mobo's sometimes they require you to create a Raid 0 array with the single drive in order for it to be detected. However I think we should focus on the controller at this point so we can get that to work properly before moving on.

 

[LeeJend]

One thought I had - might the on-chip SATA controller be conflicting with the IDE controller card I have in the PCI slot?

Yes, it could.

Check under device manager and see if there is a yellow exclamation mark on any devices. If not then open the IDE and SATA controllers and see if it says there is an IRQ conflict. You can force windows to change IRQ lines by moving which slot a PCI card is in.

Also, pull the card out and boot to your windows install CD. See if your PC and Windows recognizes the SATA driver then.

Don't forget you need to format AND partition a new drive for it to show up in windows.

 

[greg3305]

Aprox, in response to your query, I have uninstalled the drivers and re-installed them multiple times. I downloaded the newest version of the drivers from the ECS website in order to do so. Also, the RAID utility says that no arrays were detected, and also that no stand-alone drives were detected. Then again, if the hardware RAID controller is unable to start, it would say that wouldn't it?

LeeJend, in response to your query, there is a yellow exclamation point next to the SATA RAID Controller, which reports the error message I originally noted. I checked the IRQ assignments - the RAID controller shared an IRQ with the USB 1.1 controller and the IDE controller. I switched slots and the IDE contoller and SATA controller are now on different IRQs, but the SATA controller still shares with USB 1.1 and "Multimedia" device. Windows still reports it is unable to start the device.

 

[Aprox]

Its not unusual for some devices to share IRQ's, however in your case this might pose a problem. Have you checked to see if you bios has a setting along the lines of "Plug & Play OS" If so, is it enabled or disabled? If its disabled, try enabling it.. or vice versa.

Do you have a lot of other PCI devices in your system as well?

And yes to your question, that is why we need to get your contoller working before we move on to the next step.

 

[greg3305]

Nope, nothing along the lines of Plug & Play OS, and the only two PCI devices are the IDE controller and the sound card.

I eventually got pissed and yanked the IDE card, pulling out an old 80GB drive and using the mobo's IDE channels for the two others. This immediately caused the SATA controller BIOS to display during the startup sequence where the IDE controller BIOS used to. BIOS recognized the SATA drive. After fixing the boot configuration to load Windows from the newly rearranged drives, I checked the device manager - no problems. The new drive appeared in Disk Management and I'm happiliy formatting it now. Looks like my computer just didn't like having more than one drive controller. I guess that means it's time to upgrade to all SATA.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Aprox]

Well I am glad you got it all figured out then. Its good that it was a simple solution rather than something more complex.

Good luck and you should stick around this site, maybe you can help someone else out with a problem. 🙂