Intermittent AHCI drive detection

[Cragzman]

Hi all.

 

For the last few months I have had an issue with the AMD AHCI not picking up my primary drive with Windows 7 x64 on it when switching on from cold. Sometimes it then wakes up after I prod the Reset button on the tower. If I'm very lucky, it does sometimes boot up with no problems from a switch on a first time. Once Windows is loaded, I have no problems at all.

 

Brief specs:

GA-MA790X-UD3P (with latest BIOS),

Phenom 9950 BE,

4GB OCZ 1066MHz DDR2,

OCZ GameXstream 700W PSU,

Radeon 4870HD 1024MB GDDR5,

Blu-Ray re-writer SATA2 (set to IDE),

Primary HDD - Windows 7 Ult x64 on WDC BE 500GB SATA2 (set to AHCI),

Secondary HDD - Files and other junk on WDC 250GB SATA2 (set to AHCI).

Drive configuration as JBOD (no RAID)

 

What it does:

1. Power up PC and BIOS posts ok.

 

2. Next, the AMD AHCI scanning devices screen appears.

 

3. After a little while, it will either -

(a) Sits on the Scanning Drives....... bit for up to 30 seconds, picks up only my 2nd hard drive that don't have Windows on it, then goes on to try and boot from PXE on my NIC. I hit the Reset button on tower then it either does it again or boots the OS on second time.

Or..........

(b) Picks up both my primary Win7 drive along with my 2nd hard drive and then boots straight into Windows (lucky to get this first time - roughly 25% of the time).

 

Any ideas on how to solve this annoying riddle?

 

Many thanks

[difinity]

When it isn't being detected is it spinning ?

Might be worth getting a new drive and cloning the old one, and replacing the sata cable.

[Cragzman]

I'm going to open up the case later and check the SATA cable, and possibly replace it. To be honest, I haven't checked if the drive spins up when scanning. Hope the drive isn't the culprit. Only bought it under a year ago ggrrrrrrr. But when the AHCI does randomly pick it up, Windows loads with no probs. Thanks for the reply and will keep you posted