Why wouldn't a particular motherboard recognise a particular SATA disk?

I'm busy upgrading the hard drive on a system with a Gigabyte GA-GC230D motherboard with an Atom CPU.

I am swapping out a 120GB SATA drive with a 500GB SATA drive. Both notebook form factor. Both known good. For some reason the BIOS recognises the 120GB drive but will not recognise the 500GB drive.

I just can't think of a reason why it wouldn't. The new drive is a Hitachi 7K500.

tomfanning

Posted 2010-12-20T10:56:42.887

Reputation: 749

Sometimes its just a compatibility issue, another brand may work, did you update the bios on the motherboard? – Moab – 2010-12-20T11:07:28.740

One reason can be SATA1/SATA2 negotiation. I'm not sure of specifics, but a motherboard SATA connector whose SATA controller knows only SATA1, will not be able to communicate with a SATA2 hard disk(unless the SATA2 hard disk is jumpered to act like SATA1). I am not sure if it's just a motherboard issue in that situation. And I don't knwo if all SATA2 HDDs have that option. – barlop – 2010-12-20T11:42:38.243

There is a flaw in the subject you gave your question. Your question may not be SATA specific. – barlop – 2010-12-20T12:17:04.127

Answers

Try to update motherboard BIOS to the latest version.
Try another SATA cable.

Amir Rezaei

Posted 2010-12-20T10:56:42.887

Reputation: 1 443

Verify that you have AHCI compliant SATA ports and that AHCI is enabled. The drive management software by Micron and Samsung, for example, will refuse to recognize their own drives if they are on a non-AHCI SATA port.

Enabling AHCI mode is not always an option, as not all SATA ports are AHCI compliant. SATA-I and some SATA-II motherboards offer SATA without AHCI. You can expect that any SSD that requires AHCI mode to function will not work on them.

You will find many cases where BIOS will recognize the drives but the OS may not because of AHCI-mode-only software restrictions. Without AHCI enabled neither the Micron nor the Samsung drive management software will even recognize their own drives as being in the system. There are also some rather arcane restrictions, such as Micron not supporting nvidia chipsets. Read the documentation before you buy.

Bob P

Posted 2010-12-20T10:56:42.887

Reputation: 11