SATA issues...

[CalcProgrammer1]

My PC seems to have a second BIOS for SATA RAID. I'm not sure why, but it goes to the WinFast BIOS screen (Award BIOS) and after that, before booting it says something like Silicon Image SATARAID, press F4 for menu (or something like that). I can't access the menu if there's no SATA drive plugged in though, so maybe I need to connect my drive to one of the working ports, press F4, and then enable the other two. I'll try that.

 

[chris.holton]

Hi, I am also another noob with VERY similar situation. Have Gateway desktop with sata 500GB hdd. Have additional 500 GB IDE drive I want to install with the ide to sata converter I bought. However, the computer will NOT recognize the new drive when installed. on any of the other three sata ports. I have gone in to the cmos and see see that the original drive is enabled as a sata and raided configuration but no matter how I manipulate the settings I am NOT able to edit the sata ports...they are "blacked out." I then installed the new drive as a slave on the dvd-rw ide cable and it was seen just fine. Next I put it in an external enclosure and it was also visible via usb and ieee1394. Kind of stunned at this one!! Now I do have one question that is reaching but is my nly other idea... the ide to sata converter uses power from a ide plug and the ide hdd as well. Could this drive NOT being plugged in to a sata power cable affect it? Surely it isn't that riduculously easy right?
Please help!! Chris

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

The power shouldn't matter. SATA power cables and IDE (molex) connectors do the same thing, carry two grounds, a +5V, and a +12V supply. You can get converter cables to change molex connectors into SATA connectors. It shouldn't matter where it gets power. Why do you want to use an IDE drive with an IDE-to-SATA adapter when you can just use it as an IDE drive on the slave on the DVD-RW? If you have an empty IDE cable just use that, it'll be better than converting from IDE to SATA (if you think you'll get better speeds using SATA, think again, the IDE-SATA adapter will only run at IDE speed, the slowest speed in the setup).

 

[KSoD]

I've never had to turn ports on/off and have never heard of that either. As such, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Then it must be system specific. Cause i know with my Dell this is what i have to do. I have tried to turn on all ports and i get a boot error. So i have to turn off the one that doesnt have a drive connected for it to work.