Drive not recognized in bios on an old Asus A7V8X-X

J

jrbryner

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I'm upgrading a computer I put together a few years back. It's has an Asus A7V8X-X motherboard. I'm adding a Western Digital EIDE 500gb drive to it (upgrading from a dying 120gb).

I updated the bios of the mobo with the latest non-beta release, 1013 from 2004.

So, I installed the drive and it's not detected in POST. While booting it show a blank space for the Primary Master, "None" for pri slave, "None" for sec. master and the DVD drive for sec.slave

After it goes through the drive check an error shows that there is no primary master, press F1 to continue or DEL to enter the bios setup.

Ok, so now I've tried pressing F1 with the Windows XP home install disk inserted. It will enter setup, detect the drive in the install and will go through the entire installation Windows installation process. When it comes to rebooting, the drive still doesn't show up in post and if I take the Windows disk out of the drive the computer will not boot due to no drive being present.

The diagnostic tools that also came with the new drive do show the drive. It can format it, run maintenance checks on it, etc. It's just the bios that doesn't see it.

I'm chalking this up to the motherboard being manufactured before drives larger than 127gb were not supported at the time, though I thought that the BIOS update would fix that. I also think it's strange that the Windows install can work with the drive, as well as the diagnostic tools.

Another note: the old 120gb still works fine. I think the partition table had an error. A new format and fresh install of Windows and it runs fine. The drive is going on 3 or 4 years old though and I'm not trusting it, hence the reason to upgrade to the 500gb. Point being, I don't think it's a cable or fried controller issue.

Any suggestions?
 
the quickest way would be to partition it as
120g c: 120g d: (primary,extended ) and
then make a 120 120 (3d 4th) partitions for
ghost (bootit NG) backups or freebsd or...
..........
caveat a: quickest not always best
caveat b: the above is moot if the 128 applies to drives and not to partitions. which
means I am unclear on the subject.
 
Check to make sure the jumpers are correct? I know it's such a simple thing, but alot of people miss that.

Especially WD drives. If it's a single drive with no slave, then no jumpers i do believe. If it has a slave, then it's the middle jumper? Just guessing off the top of my head. Just check those to make sure it's correct.

Best of luck.

-D
 
I have the jumpers on cable select. I normally wouldn't use that, but the working 120gb is on CS also. Maybe I'll try a master/no slave jumper setting.

I can try the partitioning, though I would think that would apply to the OS, not the bios.

What are the odds that it's a bum drive?
 
If the BIOS can't see it, you won't be able to boot off of it. The Windows install can see it because it loads drivers for your ATA controller separately. Until you can get the BIOS to see it, you are SOL on booting from it.

There are a couple of things that might be going on:
1) You might have a motherboard that was made when ATA-133 was fairly new and it has a separate onboard ATA-133 controller (and the native controller in the chipset would be ATA-66). If that is the case, check to make sure it is enabled in the BIOS. There also might be a firmware update for this controller to detect larger drives. My guess, though, is that if Windows can see it, it doesn't need a firmware upgrade, just to have its boot options enabled either in the main motherboard BIOS or it's own configuration utility.
2) Your ATA controller can't see drives as large as 500GB. Some ATA controllers reach their limit at 150ish, some at 300, and others at 400. Check the drive manufacturer website to see if there is any "trick" software you are going to have to run, like way back in the days when 4GB was the max an IDE controller could see.

Good luck!
Ryan
 
No, IIRC the A7V8X-X had a disabled sata controller with no ports.
I had a 160gb drive working fine on this same board (just sold it actually)
Not sure what the problem is...
 
Reading around the net, it looks like, if your board was manufactured before January 2003, you're SOL, since it doesn't have 48bit support. You're limited to 137gb.
 
Drakan290 said:
Reading around the net, it looks like, if your board was manufactured before January 2003, you're SOL, since it doesn't have 48bit support. You're limited to 137gb.
Click to expand...

That's a bummer.

Another idea would be to get a small drive (40gb, 80gb, etc.) and use it for your OS. Then get an separate controller for your 500gb. I'm sure someone here would have one laying around that they are not using.

Best of luck!

-D
 
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