SATA 3.0GB hdds not recognized in MJ12-m7700a

Hello. I recently upgraded my alienware, switching the two 80GB SATA 1.5GB in RAID 0 and after installing two Seagates Momentus 7200.3 with 320GB each they aren't recognized anywhere on the computer. I updated the bios to the latest bios revision I could find which was 1.00.09 but it simply hasn't solved the issue. When installing windows vista the hdds don't show up at the drive selection page and even after installing the sata raid controllers it still doesn't recognize the disks. It happens all the same on the bios, this since I don't even have the option to see hdd configs besides ata ones (which I don't have) Does anyone has a solution to this issue?

 

could be incompatible with your chip set possibly?

 

Welcome to the NBR forums.

yes the SATA-II (300MB/s) is compatible in the Clevo D900K.

you need to set the jumper on the new HDDs to SATA-I (150MB/s) mode.

I have 2 Seagates SATA drives in my notebook, which are jumpered to SATA-I mode.... works perfect... no performance loss or anything.

 

I had two 7K320's which are SATA II drives in my D900K before it died. Both drives worked flawlessly. I will install them back in my D900K when I get my replacement motherboard.
You may have to go into the bios and select: "set to factory defaults" and see if that helps.
You may also want to try the different settings for SATA raid. Try booting with SATA raid enabled and disabled.

Do you see the harddrives in the raid manager?
You have to press tab as the bios is loading to get into the raid manager.

K-TRON

 

Thanks everyone for the advices but the hdds have no jumpers on them, at least visible ones. When the via sata utility shows up briefly it only tells the disks are not attached, and the sata raid option was both on and off, displaying the same results all the times. I was hoping the bios update would make the sata negotiation compatible with the disks but it seemed to make no difference. On the setup of vista I again loaded the drivers but it kept showing a blank screen on the disk selection screen.

 

actually which HDDs are you trying to use.

the best compatible SATA-II drives for this particular SATA-I notebook are:
- Seagate Momentus
- Hitachi Travelstar

Western Digital's are not going to work well... I had compatibility problems with them as well.

 

I'm trying to use the two seagate momentus but I'm not being able to see them anywhere. At their homepage there isn't any mention about drivers whatsoever, the via raid driver from viaarena.com was worthless, at least for what it didn't do, and it could also not be directly related to issue of recognizing the disks

 

Here is the pic in the Seagate Momentus manual:

 

As I said before the disks have no jumper configuration at all. On the seagate site the Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS is claimed to autonegotiate SATA 3.0 to 1.5, therefore being compatible with this board. The raid driver for vista was unable to recognize the disks so I switched to a xp installation and the respective xp x86 raid controller advanced the configuration another step, so afterwards the disk is still unrecognizable but isn't anymore read as a mass storage device but instead a missing disk, which hypotetically can be understood as a raid setting on the bios. I tried both sata raid on and off but the result is the same

 

here is a pic of a Momentus 7200.3 drive....

it does have a jumper layout next to the SATA connector:

 

After all the problem was really the manual negotiation of SATA that was required indeed through a jumper setting. The previous post was really helpful because the jumper location was a bit hidden. The disks are recognized and the array was configured already without any kind of issue. Your help was invaluable and if in the future there is any problem that I can be of any assistance I will aid in any way I can. Once again thanks

 

I'm installing vista smoothly but in a previous installation I had quite some trouble finding stable drivers for the video card, a nvidia quadro fx 1400m. could you suggest any version and site to download them?

 

The Quadro FX1400M is a nice card, I was thinking about getting that one, but I decided to get the FX2500M.
You can download the latest drivers from the card from Laptop video2go's website.
I listed all of the latest ones for you:

The XP 32-bit drivers are here: (169.96)
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/xp/169.96

The XP 64-bit drivers are here: (169.96)
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/xp64/169.96

The Vista 32-bit drivers are here: (176.92)
httphttp://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista/176.92

The Vista 64-bit drivers are here: (176.92)
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/vista64/176.92

K-TRON

 

After trying to install xp from an usb the drive wasn't bootable at all, I tried booting to dos with the i386 folder, making a bootable usb with bartpe xp installation and none of that worked so I'm installing vista now, already with two restarts during setup and the optical drive continues to not be recognized on the post or bios. Are you sure that that version of the nvidia drivers is compatible with the quadro, even though it's listed as compatible? Also, there is no way to update the dvd drive firmware since it is not recognized. The connectors are clean and without any bent pins whatsoever.

 

have you tried just using one optical drive at a time.

I have recently ran into conflicting optical drives when I was trying to upgrade one of my drives.... the BIOS gives me gibberish for the optical drive info and does not even detect one of them.

 

After testing the drive on other computer it seemed the drive really went dead. I use this alienware as a workstation with canopus edius 5 and I'm having some frame skip with hd content, which isn't strange due to it's nature but now I'm having it as well with sd content and such situation isn't bearable in my line of work. Could it be the driver version of the video card and if so are there other driver version, newer or older, that could solve this issue? I'm using the latest chipset and raid drivers from via, although this happens when editing either from external hdd or from the internal ones in raid

 

I had to uninstall vista and return to xp, with a new optical drive, but now the drive is seldom recognized and only when connecting it with more than enough strength does it works, only to fail after some time, and not enough time to restore the original backup image. Could it be the motherboard that is faulty?

 

Have you taken your system apart before?

If you have, you want to get to the point where you can take the motherboard out.
The reason why I say this, is because the optical drives are connected to the motherboard via a riser card. Its a small piece which connects to the motherboard via two small screws.
If it is loose, the drives may not be making full contact with the motherboard.
Unfortunately the only way to tighten it is to remove the whole motherboard.

If you dont want to go through all of that trouble, maybe try flashing the bios back to a slightly older version.

K-TRON

 

Actually I have already dismantled the computer but only to replace the lcd. Are there any schematics to do such operation? Now not even usb drives and hdds are recognized as bootable, saying there is a disk error and tell me to restart the computer

 

If no physical storage device is being recognized, it sounds like your ATA controller is dying.
Unfortunately you will need a new motherboard to fix that.

I had a similar problem,
When my d900k motherboard died i sent it back and the second replacement board had a similar problem. I would power it up, it would read the optical drives, but it could not read any of the harddrives I tried installing on it.
I knew the sata cable worked because it worked in my old motherboard with the corrupt bios.
Knowing I had to send the board back I did a little looking around. Under the large chipset cooler on mine, was the storage controller, and what do you know, it wasnt soldered down properly, causing one side not to get contact with the motherboard.
I got a new motherboard and everything is workingnow.
Chances are your storage controller must be either burning out, or coming loose for those problems to be happening.

I bought my replacement motherboard from z-tronics. After placing an order, call up and ask them to test the board before shipping it.

K-TRON

 

I'm disassembling the computer but after removing all screws I can't remove the upper cover on the keyboard side because it seems to be jammed on the touchpad area. Earlier this day the optical drive was recognized and the hard disks were never unrecognized, only the usb devices don't work

 

Remove the harddrive caddy.
Underneath the harddrive is a single screw which screws into the bottom of the touchpad/palmrest.

it seems your system is pretty flaky, working sometimes, and not on others.

When you have the system apart, remove the large flat black chipset cooler, and examine the chipsets. If any look like they are not sitting properly, its time to buy a new motherboard.

K-TRON

 

After disassembling the computer again I couldn't find that screw you mentioned but the machine is simply inoperational since the optical drive isn't seldom recognized anymore and all usb drives aren't bootable even though I made exactly the same process to boot the system with both ghost 14 and vista, giving the same message "operating system not found". I'm all out of solutions to try

 

did you check under the keyboard?
To remove the keyboard, look above the F1-F12 keys. Their are 4 small plastic clips which hold the keyboard down. Use a small flat head screwdriver to release the latches.
After you removed the keyboard, did you remove the five small screws which hold down the metal plate?
Under that metal plate are four small screws which hold the top chassis down to the lower part of the chassis.

You also need to remove the lid in order to remove the four small screws which hold the system together

Here is an image of the screws you need to take out: (bottom view)



One further question.
When you power the system up, does the harddrive spin?
You may need to hold your hand to the harddrive to feel if its spinning.
If its not spinning, than you either have a dead Sata cable, or the chipset is not working correctly, thus not powering the storage controller.
If the harddrive is spinning, it should be recognized by the Bios.

K-TRON