No Channel 0?

tw33k · 17 Feb 2010

I've been looking for a few days now and can't find anything to answer this (apparently Google is not my friend).
No matter which port on the mobo I connect a SATA drive to, it will not show in the BIOS as connected to IDE Channel 0. I only have my hard drive and bluray drive connected. Haven't don't anything special to the drives or the board.
Apart from flashing the BIOS (which I'll be doing tonight after work) are there any suggestions?
Does it matter what channel the drives are on?

Night Hawk · 17 Feb 2010

Why would it? If you are running a sata drive that falls under the sata/Raid controllers not the onboard eide controllers and will be listed under any ide drives on the post screen. The bios setup>boot>hard drives item depending on how the bios is there will show the hard drives installed as well as set the order.

tw33k · 17 Feb 2010

Night Hawk said:

Why would it? If you are running a sata drive that falls under the sata/Raid controllers not the onboard eide controllers and will be listed under any ide drives on the post screen. The bios setup>boot>hard drives item depending on how the bios is there will show the hard drives installed as well as set the order.

I'm sorry but that makes no sense to me

Night Hawk · 17 Feb 2010

When you first turn on a system unless a factory logo screen appears first the initial post tests are conducted by the bios and the drives installed are lited onscreen for about a second or two before Windows starts loading. Any ide drives are displayed at the top of the drives displayed there.

Your optical drive(s) as well as any ide hard drives are shown above any sata drive(s) installed. Sata is Serial ATA while ide drives run on Parallel ATA a totally different controller to start with. Each drive type is on separate buses. Channel 0 and 1 are strictly ide not sata.

Wishmaster · 17 Feb 2010

Every board is different in how the number they number ports.

my DFI lists its 6 SATA ports as : 0,1,2,3,4,5 for example.

In bios:
In IDE mode it shows port 1-6 ..
In ACHI it shows the actual port numbers 0-5 as labled on the board.

Whether your board labels its first port as 0 or 1, is irrelavent and nothing to to be concerned with.

AS far as what order,
I like to have my OS drive in the very first port, and CD/DVD drives in the very last ports.

tw33k · 17 Feb 2010

OK>>I think I get it. I'm running the drives in IDE mode so the fact that my hard drive is on, say, IDE Channel 4 master is of no concern?

Wishmaster · 17 Feb 2010

Seeing as you have a SSD (assuming the OS is on it), I would put that in port 0 or 1, however its labeled.

The other HDs, I would put in the other channels, leaving a free port betwen them and the SSD to prevent any potential cross talk if you can.

And the DVD Drive in last possible slot.

This is from a DFI, but should but the SATA ports should similar to most any board.

In this pic, Port 0, or 1 (the very first) would be on the top right side. (yellow)

They number right to left 0,2,4,6
And bottom right to left 1,3,5,7

so 0 over 1 .. 2 over 3 etc

far left being bottom of case .. far right being toward top of case.

Hopefully this helps.
Or maybe Im just confused what your asking :)

If you look around your SATA ports, it very well may have it stamped on the board which ones are which. Although, may be tough to see.

But in the end, so long as the board knows which disc to boot from etc, and its set rtight, it really wont matter that much.

tw33k · 17 Feb 2010

I think I understand now.
I think IDE Channel 0 and 1 are reserved for the g_SATA ports (as labeled on the board). These ports are to connect esata drives. If you look at the pic, these are the purple ports. Channels 2-4 are the internal ports so of course Channels 0 and 1 appear blank in the BIOS.

stormy13 · 17 Feb 2010

Here's an idea, if you don't have anything connected to the IDE controller/port (the lime green one), go into the bios and disable it. Then you don't have to worry about IDE channel 0, and it isn't taking up any resources as it isn't being used anyway.

tw33k · 17 Feb 2010

Yeah...good idea