M3n78-EM 3 out of 5 SATA work?

U

UT-Jackal

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 2, 2004
Messages
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I have the ASUS M3N78-EM mobo, and for some reason it can only see the first 3 sata ports. They are colored red, where as the other two are black. My understanding is that the black ones are for a raid configuration, but i can't figure out how to just use them as standard SATA ports. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance
 
So you have drives plugged into all of them?

Did you install all the chipset drivers? And did you check the BIOS for an option to toggle between RAID and not?
 
I have installed the newest chipset drivers, and flashed the bios. Drivers are plugged into all slots. I went through the bios, and tried the three different "modes", SATA mode, RAID mode, and another that starts with an A i can't recall. Only the SATA mode showed any of the drives, and it only showed 3 of the 5. If i swap the cables around, it sees whatever drives are plugged into the 3 red.
 
The Black set are probably using a different chipset and so require an additional set of drivers. In windows check device manager and see if you see any SCSI/DISK controllers that havent got the drivers installed for them.
 
I had the same issue methinks...the ports will only work in ahci mode if I recall correctly. It should be an option in the bios. Word of caution windows doesn't like drives being switched to ahci mode on the fly so it probably wont boot. You can check if this is the issue cause you can always switch back to the other mode and you system will boot just like it is now.
 
I didn't see anything for additional drivers, but i'll check again. I tried booting in AHCI mode, and even RAID mode, both of which started to load windows, and then gave me a blip of the blue screen of death. =[

I appriciate the ideas though, keep them coming if anyone has any others.
 
Toytown said:
The Black set are probably using a different chipset and so require an additional set of drivers. In windows check device manager and see if you see any SCSI/DISK controllers that havent got the drivers installed for them.
Click to expand...

^
This
 
quique55 said:
I had the same issue methinks...the ports will only work in ahci mode if I recall correctly. It should be an option in the bios. Word of caution windows doesn't like drives being switched to ahci mode on the fly so it probably wont boot. You can check if this is the issue cause you can always switch back to the other mode and you system will boot just like it is now.
Click to expand...
Toytown said:
The Black set are probably using a different chipset and so require an additional set of drivers. In windows check device manager and see if you see any SCSI/DISK controllers that havent got the drivers installed for them.
Click to expand...
^^^^^^
OP your problem is probably due to one of these two reasons i quoted above, personally i think the first opinion about AHCI mode is correct, as i've read about it enough and experienced it with other motherboards. The problem with ahci is some motherboards won't switch to it unless you install the raid/ahci drivers while you're installing windows (that F6 prompt that comes up). Although some motherboards will allow you to install the raid/ahci drivers after you've installed windows.

Or i could be totally wrong in your case and you may need different drivers for those particular sata ports.

Personally i recommend you google or Bing search the term "M3N78-EM ahci" and see what you come up with. Or you can start a thread in our storage forum to see what the resident pro's have to say.

Good luck either way.
 
UT-Jackal said:
I didn't see anything for additional drivers, but i'll check again. I tried booting in AHCI mode, and even RAID mode, both of which started to load windows, and then gave me a blip of the blue screen of death. =[

I appriciate the ideas though, keep them coming if anyone has any others.
Click to expand...

Although it is about a different board, P5N7A, this post over at AVS claims to have resolved it with a registry hack. It's the same 3 red, 2 black setup, so it should work for you too.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=16606211&postcount=975
 
It will more than likely not let you boot into windows like I mentioned but you should see all your drives recognized in the screen after your Asus splash screen. I think if you disable quiet boot you will be able to see what drives are recognized in the mode you are in. I was not able to fix it when Vista was installed but to be honest with you I didnt give much effort since it was a fresh install and didnt mind redoing my install afterwards.


Edit: Basically make sure your bios sees your drives otherwise windows wont be able to.
 
Last edited:
So when I did use the setting for AHCI, i did see more drives in the bios load screen. There were two things about it I found strange though. One was that none of the drives showed up in bios, where as it use to show 3, and secondly the drives list i saw post-splash screen weren't named, like they have been on all previous computers i've used (ie. WD1200J, or something).

I will give the registry thing a shot, and then I will just go and do a fresh install as y'all recommended if that doesn't work.

Thanks again for the help.
 
So i tried the Registry "hack" that DDR4040 said, and then switched it to the AHCI mode and it worked!

Thanks a lot guys, you saved me a bunch of time!
 
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