SATA Problems Anyone?

**bored155** · July 8th, 2007, 05:41 PM

Hey everyone. I've been here before, and i'm here again. I have the DFI LanParty UT RDX200 CF-DR (crossfire chipset). I've also got an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (no cons about the processor at all, excellent performance.) Anyway, this is the first MoBo i've ever had that supported SATA. Even though it only supports SATA I, I can still use SATA II drives. So, i've got 2x Maxtor (manufactured by Seagate thank science.) 160GB 72000RPM drives (the 8MB cache model.) Up until I put these drives in, everything worked great. Well, kind of, I've always had this stupid startup issue where sometimes it hangs at a black screen with a blinking underscore, but, that's the least of my worries now. Once I started using the new SATA drives, my computer will just lock up randomly. It seems to do it the most if I leave my computer for more than about 30 minutes, when I come back it will either have 1.) Already restarted itself and ended anything and everything I was doing, or 2.) I'll click around a bit and realize that Windows isn't responding and then the cursor will freeze and I have to do a hard restart. This is getting very frustrating and it ONLY happens when i'm running off of the SATA drives. I have tried reinstalling Windows three times now, and i'm pretty much out of hope. What do you guys think it could be? I would hope it's the MoBo's shoddy ATI SATA controller, because it would give me an excuse to buy a new Asus or other board that supports SATA II. I have also heard that my board was one of (if not the first) gen. of ATI chipsets. I am wondering if my next board should be an nForce? Also, i'm running a Sapphire Radeon x1650xt that is just awesome for gaming, but I don't think i'll be crossfiring any time soon, so having an nForce MoBo is okay with me. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

**Atomic Rooster** · July 8th, 2007, 05:48 PM

Did you install all the correct SATA drivers?

During installation, it will prompt you to press F6 to install the drivers.

Here's a good How To Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives from Seagate.

**bored155** · July 8th, 2007, 05:54 PM

Well, no, I didn't because I thought at the F6 prompt you were supposed to install RAID drivers... I'm reading the link as I type. I'll try it and see if it works. Thanks.

**bored155** · July 9th, 2007, 10:06 AM

So i'm thinking i'm going to backup my stuff and reinstall Windows (4th time this year, yippee for Windows.......) When it prompts me to install drivers via F6, must they be on a floppy? I don't have a floppy drive anymore as besides BIOS updates, I kind of saw them as pointless in this day and age. Can I use a USB Fob or CD to install the drivers?

**Jarhed7276** · July 9th, 2007, 10:44 AM

Did you set the jumper on the back of the drive?

The jumper block adjacent to the SATA interface connector on SATA 300MB/s drives can be used to force the drive into SATA 150MB/s mode for use with older SATA controllers that only work with SATA 150MB/s drives.