Electronics Forum / Repair / July 2008

Do you have both cables (power & data) connected?  Have you tried to see
if the motherboard sees it as the primary drive?  Does the bios let you
turn off the second SATA port?  

  I can't find anything on the Hitachi website, but Seagate/Maxtor
gives these instructions:

    Configuring the BIOS

Close your computer case and restart your computer. Your computer may
automatically detect your new drive. If your computer does not
automatically detect your new drive, follow the steps below.

Restart your computer. While the computer restarts, run the system setup
program (sometimes called BIOS or CMOS setup). This is usually done by
pressing a special key, such as DELETE, ESC, or F1 during the startup
process.

Within the system setup program, instruct the system to auto detect your
new drive.

Save the settings and exit the setup program. When your computer
restarts, it should recognize your new drive. If your system still
doesn't recognize your new drive, see the troubleshooting section on the
back of this sheet.

Note: Serial ATA is a new interface type. Some older systems may see the
drive and classify it as a SCSI device if you are using a Serial ATA
host adapter. This is normal even though this is not a SCSI disc drive.
Many systems’ BIOS will not identify a Serial ATA drive connected to a
PCI SATA host adapter.  This is because a PCI SATA Host Adapter has its
own BIOS which is used to identify hard drives connected to it which is
separate from the BIOS of the computer.  To determine whether or not the
SATA Host Adapter is detecting the Serial ATA hard drive, please consult
the documentation provided by the Serial ATA Host Adapter’s
manufacturer. This does not affect drive performance or capacity.

BIOS setups often have two sets of controls.  One set controls how the
BIOS handles the setup for drives on the controllers it finds (e.g.
whether it asks the drive for its configuration, or uses a manually-
entered configuration).  The other set controls which of the
hard-drive controller ports on the motherboard are enabled.

It is possible that the latter setting in your BIOS is set to "Primary
only" rather than "Both".

If this is the case, then the BIOS may very well be disabling the
secondary port completely when it configures the chipset.  The port
wouldn't be active in the I/O register space, wouldn't connect to an
interrupt, and wouldn't show up during the enumeration (scanning) of
the PCI configuration space.  The port (and any drive connected to it)
simply "wouldn't exist" to the rest of the BIOS, or to the operating
system.

Check the "Onboard peripherals" or "PCI peripherals" section of your
BIOS configuration, and make sure that the onboard IDE/SATA
configuration is set to "both".

If this is a dual-style (parallel-ATA and serial-ATA) motherboard, you
*might* have to disable the parallel-ATA port(s) in order to use both
SATA ports... or, load a specialized driver to allow you to use three
or more ports.

Ok here is what you do.

Make sure the SATA port you're trying to attach the drive to is enabled in
BIOS.

If it is enabled and the drive is not seen by the BIOS, swap cables and
attach the boot drive to the port. Is the boot drive seen?

If yes, swap cables only. Is the new drive seen now?

Yes - replace cable
No - replace drive.

Quoted Snipped

Generally unlabled jumpers are dangerous, I really hate makers that go to
such lengths just to be difficult and avoid proper documentation.

If the drive refused to be recognised using the working drive's cable and
power connectors it's a safe bet it is in trouble. That's why substituting
a non working unit for the working unit is a very important step in
troubleshooting this.

Wanderer ( think I prevously forgot to include a sig sorry)

AFAICT this is your motherboard manual (Intel D945GTP, NT94510J
Cortez):
http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d945gtp/sb/d1407001us.pdf

The 3-pin jumper is documented on page 65. It doesn't appear to be
relevant to your problem.

I was wondering whether your motherboard had the earlier SATA
interface, so I checked out the following documents and found some
conflicting data, probably errors. For example, Intel's datasheet
states that your motherboard supports SATA 2 (3G/s transfer rate), but
Gateway's HDD spec refers to the SATA2 HD (3G/s) as having a Serial
ATA-150 (1.5 G/s) interface. FWIW, Seagate and Maxtor drives have a
1.5GB/3GB jumper for backward compatibility with slower SATA
interfaces, but I don't believe your Hitachi drive is so equipped.

http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d945gtp/sb/CS-029368.htm
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/D945GTP/TP_manual.htm
http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/1008881/1008881sp2.shtml
http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/1008881/1008881cl3.shtml
http://support.gateway.com/s/harddrv/Hitachi/105425/105425sp2.shtml
http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/1008881/1008881nv.shtml
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/products/Deskstar_T7K250

- Franc Zabkar