SSD not found

RogerR · 05 Aug 2014

Thought I had a failing hard drive, as I was getting a boot failure, but when I put it in another machine, everything is there. I cloned it to a new SSD and ... same thing; No Primary Master Detected. The BIOS is not recognizing any SATA drives as present (thought it does detect an old IDE in the same box).

This is a new one on me - is it possible the SATA controller on the mobo died? How do I verify that? I've been through the BIOS setup (default settings) and in the start up sequence I do see AHCI port 5 ... not detected.

RogerR · 05 Aug 2014

Hmmm ... noted the CD was functioning on SATA, switched some cables around and the SSD is recognized but does not appear when auto-detecting hard drives, and for some reason I can't move it up the boot order. Just when you thought you'd seen it all ...

Elite Group GF8200A mobo - nothing fancy going on, just the home-office work horse.

Mellon Head · 05 Aug 2014

Is the SSD plugged into SATA port 0?

ignatzatsonic · 05 Aug 2014

What happens if you connect a known good hard drive to the very same port that the SSD was connected to, with the very same cables? Is that drive recognized and all appears normal?

Not sure I'm following you. Are you saying that NOW the SSD is recognized, when connected to the same port, but now with different cables?

I'd just try a process of elimination, swapping ports, using known good cables and known good drives, to pin down whether it's a drive issue, port issue, or cable issue.

RogerR · 05 Aug 2014

Mellon Head said:

Is the SSD plugged into SATA port 0?

ignatzatsonic said:

What happens if you connect a known good hard drive to the very same port that the SSD was connected to, with the very same cables? Is that drive recognized and all appears normal?

Not sure I'm following you. Are you saying that NOW the SSD is recognized, when connected to the same port, but now with different cables?

I'd just try a process of elimination, swapping ports, using known good cables and known good drives, to pin down whether it's a drive issue, port issue, or cable issue.

I have alternately tried both the SSD and a presumed good SATA WD HDD into SATA Port 0 with a known good cable. Both ARE detected correctly at the boot screen (which hangs after port detection), but ARE NOT detected in the CMOS setup utility (drive auto-detect utility).

Edit: This is not consistent. I cleared the CMOS and on reboot only the CD (AHCI Port 2) was recognized, the HDD on Port 0 was not. What is consistent is the hanging in the boot sequence.

Mellon Head · 05 Aug 2014

It sounds like a flaky BIOS or a bad motherboard to me. Have you tried to rule out other problems, like bad memory, or unseated cards? It's a long shot, but...

Edit: I just looked up your processor, and its rated speed is 2.9 GHz. Are you overclocking? If you are, (Your system spec says 3.5) try taking it down to stock speeds and see what happens.

RogerR · 05 Aug 2014

Mellon Head said:

It sounds like a flaky BIOS or a bad motherboard to me. Have you tried to rule out other problems, like bad memory, or unseated cards? It's a long shot, but...

Edit: I just looked up your processor, and its rated speed is 2.9 GHz. Are you overclocking? If you are, (Your system spec says 3.5) try taking it down to stock speeds and see what happens.

BIOS set at defaults - the machine in question is other than my profile.
The only card is the graphics card and its tight. RAM is correctly identified on boot and really doesn't have a chance to screw up! Testing it in another machine seems lie a long shot indeed.

Not sure how to deal with a "flaky BIOS" when I can't get the system to boot into an OS. Do you think that's a hardware or software issue (i.e. bad ROM chip or bad programming)?

RogerR · 06 Aug 2014

When I reconnect the old IDE drives, they are being detected either. There is regular ticking sound that sounds like some kind of switching but the BIOS doesn't recognize any HDD at all. Thinking I should try to reflash the BIOS from CD. Opinions?

Edit: Went to the ECS website and there is a new BIOS but ... the recommended method for flashing the AMI bios is via a 1.44M Floppy (!! who the heck has one of them any more?) or from Windows ... which is obviously not accessible.

At this point it might be easier to pick up a $50 AM2+ motherboard, dammit.

Mellon Head · 06 Aug 2014

There's always a risk with flashing BIOS, but at this point there may not be another option. Unfortunately, I see that you need to have a floppy drive to do it. You might be able to make a bootable USB flash drive and run the BIOS update from there:

MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive - Create

It might work. If your current BIOS is corrupted, it could fix it.

but to me, it sounds like your motherboard has an issue. Like you said, it might be easier to pick up a cheap board somewhere and call it a day.