WD Caviar SATA Drive loses contact with Asus Motherboard

[MinalMoe]

I created my own PC (with somebody building it for me) with an Asus P5B-V Motherboard and a WD Caviar SE16 WD4000KS Hard Drive. The system works well, its just that frequently the HD just gets disconnected from the system.

50% of the time on booting the HD can't be found or the HD disconnects itself whilst working.

I open up the PC, pull out the connector to the SATA HD, reinsert it and the PC works again.

Asus can't come up with an answer. I think it might be the firmware, because the 3.5 floppy which worked when the system was put together now doesn't read the contents of inserted floppies.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[wahnula]

MinalMoe

First off, what type of Power Supply is in the unit? Just curious.

The fact that you can get it up & running by removing and re-seating the cable is important. Start by replacing the cheapest component: the SATA cable.

I have had problems in the past with integrated power + SATA cables (those blue WD ones), use separate, discrete cables for each function. If your PSU does not have SATA power connectors, adapters are cheap.

The reason I asked about the PSU is that firmware issues would not affect both HDD and floppy simultaneously; that would just be too much of a coincidence. If you're referring to the Asus BIOS, that should not be the reason these devices are having trouble.

Of course there may be deeper and darker reasons why this is happening but it's always best to start with the easiest. One last question: was the PC shipped to you or handed to you? I've heard many tales of components getting worked apart or destroyed during shipping of a complete PC.

Tony

 

[MinalMoe]

I delivered the parts to the assembler and drove it back in my car. 1 hiccup - the processor chip had to be reseated - solved that.

The power supply is an Antec TruePower Trio - completely independent of the red SATA cable.

 

[G0AOZ]

Rather surprising that the CPU had to be reseated - sounds suspiciously like a possible fault could be developing there...

Please clarify that you are plugging a 24-pin power connector onto the motherboard and not just a 20-pin. And also that you have the separate 4-pin power connector in as well.

Ensure the board has the latest BIOS firmware.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[MinalMoe]

Attempts to cure - changed SATA cable - no difference.

Both 24 pin and 4 pin power cables connected.

 

[G0AOZ]

When the system IS working, does the floppy drive get recognised in the BIOS? If yes, can you format a disk, or is the drive completely unable to read or write at all now?

Have you done this yet? "Ensure the board has the latest BIOS firmware.".

Please describe in more detail how "the HD just gets disconnected from the system.". So you're running XP and all of a sudden it stops/reboots/freezes/BSODs, or what?

At the point it gets "disconnected", try and establish if the drive is still spinning.

Anything pertinent in Event Viewer?

Can you attach this hard drive to another machine and run manufacturer's diagnostics on it?


ROGER - G0AOZ.