# [SOLVED] Intermittent SATA bios failure



## oldwatford (Jan 25, 2008)

I have a secondhand PC with the following spec:

Gigabyte 7VT600 1394 mobo
Athlon XP 2400+ 2 GHz
1GB RAM
XP Pro SP3
Geforce 6200
WDC WD800BB-22FJA0 HD 80GB IDE
Generic DVDRW IDE1008

The 80GB HDD was filling up, so I wanted to upgrade it. I was given a new Samsung HD250HJ, and since the Gigabyte website: 

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=1667&ProductName=GA-7VT600%201394

tells me my mobo is SATA compatible I thought I'd have a go at installing it. The HDD came without SATA data/power leads, so I got them from PCWorld. I went through the standard steps to install SATA drivers from floppy, and finally partitioned the drive OK (I don't want to boot from it, just move data to it). 

But 80% of the time when I boot up the Bios fails to find the Samsung HDD. It goes through to:

*VIA VT8237 Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utility v. 1.20 

Hardware initiate failed, please check device!!! The BIOS does not be installed. Press <g> to continue"* (sic)

When I press <g> XP boots up, but can't find the SATA drive. I know that I don't want a RAID array (only one SATA drive), and I've tried and failed to find anything other than a SATA chip enable/disable setting in my Bios (i.e. no RAID setting). I have repeatedly tried reinstalling drivers, and flashing the Bios (it won't let me flash it further than F4) and I am completely unable to get into any SATA Bios settings.

I know that something's wrong with my Bios, but I can't seem to fix it, and since the Bios manages to find the drive sometimes, I wondering whether my problem is actually hardware, i.e. dodgy cabling or interference? The Sata connections feel pretty flimsy, but I'm reluctant to buy more cables (even for a tenner!) if it's actually a duff Bios problem.

So my question is, *if the HDD is only found at startup 20% of the time, is it more likely to be cabling/interference, or Bios?*

(By the way, the Gigabyte site says that it can only run Sata I, not Sata II. The Samsung site describes a jumper setting to throttle the HDD down from 3GB/s to 1.5GB/s. Is that the same thing? I had to nick a jumper off my sound card to do this, but I also have a patch from the Samsung site which says it does the same thing. Should I install it? I haven't done yet... Or should I be using a SATA I lead?)

Please help??!!


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

*Re: Intermittent SATA bios failure*

set the drive as ide in the bios not as raid


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## oldwatford (Jan 25, 2008)

*Re: Intermittent SATA bios failure*

Thanks for the quick response dai.

It suggested to me that I wasn't going to get anywhere while the BIOS had no IDE/RAID option, so I had another go at flashing it, and for the first time it worked (or I finally did it properly, which is more likely, although it did report a 'BIOS ROM ERASING ERROR' at the end, which seems to have had no ill effects). So I have now flashed the BIOS from F4 to F7, and have a 'SATA Drive: RAID/IDE' option in the BIOS. I selected IDE, and the BIOS now boots through fine, finding the Samsung HDD as an IDE device. XP then found it as the S: drive I'd partitioned. Hurrah!

So I think you may have solved my problem, except that .... The next time I started up, the BIOS found the new drive fine, but XP didn't. I couldn't find it in My Computer or Disk Management. Device Manager didn't list the drive, but showed a VIA SATA RAID Controller with an error. I tried updating its driver, but that seemed to make no difference.

I shut it down, and started up again this morning, ready to reinstall SATA drivers via the XP setup CD and a floppy, but before I could it seems that XP is happy with the new drive again. It's found it and the My Documents folder I'd rather hopefully moved across, and the VIA SATA RAID Controller in Device Manager looks OK.

Obviously I know as much about SATA, RAID and IDE as I do about derivatives trading, but if XP carries on finding this drive then I'll leave it alone. If it doesn't should I try reinstalling the SATA drivers?

One of the (many) things that puzzles me about this is that Gigabyte's SATA drive manual (VT8237R) refers to there being a 'VIA ATA/ATAPI Host Controller (Windows XP)' option on the SATA driver setup menu, for use in non-RAID installations. But I can't find it, either among the SATA drivers on the Gigabyte website, or in the driver package I downloaded from VIA. Is that relevant?

Thanks again for your help, and for what's clearly an authoritative forum.


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

*Re: Intermittent SATA bios failure*

it may be refering to the bios setup i am not familiar with gigabye m/b
if you have a problem seeing the drive again check the data plug to it has not come loose


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## oldwatford (Jan 25, 2008)

I was wrong, the Bios wasn't finding the Sata drive, at least not at startup. I would always have to hard reboot (usually just once) before the Bios, and then XP found the drive. I tried changing the Sata cables but that didn't help either. In the end it was down to the fact that the Samsung drive (HD250HJ) is Sata II, and the VT8237 Sata chip on my mobo is Sata I only. Despite the note in the HDD manual, jumpering the back of the HDD wasn't even to throttle the transfer rate from 3 MB/s to 1.5 MB/s.

The answer? The following link on the Samsung HDD support site directed me to download a utility:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=126&orderNum=2

I extracted it onto a bootable floppy, booted up with it and ran it, restarted and ...

... so far I've had twenty clean boots in a row with both my drives present and accounted for!!


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## dai (Jul 2, 2004)

glad you have it sorted


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