Sata drives not detected while IDE drive connected

My system has 2 WD Sata drives on Sata 0 & 1, an IDE Seagate drive on IDE 1 master, and a Teac CDRW on IDE 2 master. WinXP home is installed on the Sata 0 drive, and Linux Mint 19.1 is installed on the IDE HDD.

Recently, I had yet another loose Sata cable crash which as some of you may know can be very time consuming to correct.

So first, I opened the case and replaced those Sata cables with some new Sata3 cables I had just purchased to have on hand next time this occurred. The new cables fit very tight so I was happy that I would hopefully never need deal with this scenario again.

Then I needed to boot off my WinXP install cd to access the file system and copy corrupted config files, so as is my normal habit I disconnect any drives that I don't want to accidentally affect.... which in this case was only the IDE drive with Linux Mint on it. The machine booted normally, detected both the Sata drives, and I completed the file management and confirmed that WinXP was now booting normally.

Lastly, I reconnected the IDE drive to confirm that the dual boot menu (on IDE MBR) would come up normally and allow me to boot either OS, but neither of the Sata drives were detected by BIOS. When I disconnect the IDE drive and restart, then the Sata drives appear again.

As I understand it, the new Sata3 cables are supposed to be downward compatible with all previous drives and MB ports, and should work even if that drive isn't capable of delivering the faster speeds that Sata3 cables are designed to allow. Anyway, I ended up having to replace the new Sata3 cables with the old ones that eventually come loose and cause system crashes.

Any input would be appreciated!

Wolf

 

stick the cables down with a piece of tape or something so that they won't come loose,

 

I've read plenty of articles regarding folks trying to deal with crappy Sata cables using tape, rubber bands, and even glue. I really don't want to hold my machine together with bungee cords, and even if I did that doesn't explain why the cables only work if there is no IDE device also attached to the MB.

Thanks anyway :b

 

maybe someone will have an answer for you,

 

So what exactly is your current problem ? Its unclear what you're trying to do. If you want grub or XP to pick up drives and show them in the menu then at some point the installer has to see them. If you plug in a drive after it will not show up in the boot menu but should show up in the OS as a D: or E: or whatever. If the bios can't see SATA and IDE at the same time then the problem is within bios, not cable or boot menu related.

 

"So what exactly is your current problem ? "

Loose cables that do not fit HDD properly and cause system crashes when drive is suddenly not detected any more.

"Its unclear what you're trying to do."

Find Sata cables that fit properly, and not affect the how any devices are being detected.

"If the bios can't see SATA and IDE at the same time then the problem is within bios, not cable or boot menu related."

Then why does exchanging Sata cables and making no other changes yield different results???

 

Just a note on sata cables, they might come loose once out of a million but they rarely ever go bad.

I'm reading your comment and you seem to confuse reading by the bios and reading by the bootloader. As you said you installed XP no problem because linux wasn't connected, so when you reconnect linux it doesn't know you just installed XP. It will see it in the OS as a standard slave drive but if you want to see it in the linux mint boot menu then you have to tell grub to find the bins on the drives and then update the grub. The easiest way to do this is install XP first and then linux mint so the installer picks up all bins on the drives and adds them to the boot menu. If that is not feasible its something like update-grub, and you want to check /etc/default/grub to see everything is in there and correct the boot order.

And with 4 drives connected don't discount power supply issues, capacitor issues etc.. which may make it seem bios errors but are hardware or overload errors.

 

During the crash I originally described, I was not installing or re-installing Windows. The Sata cable for the drive XP is installed on had come loose again, which lead to Windows completely freezing up and I had to turn off the machine. Then on re-boot XP would not load. It was at this point (which I had dealt with b4), I needed to boot off the XP CD to get to a dos prompt and copy backed up config files into the System32 directory.

I had already opened the case and replaced the Sata cables with the new Sata 3 cables that fit so nice. I also chose to disconnect the IDE drive which I had installed Linux on (and holds the duel boot loader), and in the BIOS changed the settings to make the XP drive the first HDD to boot from.

It was after I made the repairs to XP and confirmed it was booting normally, that I reconnected the Linux IDE drive and changed the BIOS settings back to boot off of that drive. This is when the BIOS failed to recognize either of the 2 Sata drives..... until I switched back to those crappy old cables.

This is frustrating, but I really shouldn't be too surprised since I've had similar issues with USB cables where some devices would not work without a particular cable being used.

At the moment, I have ordered yet another set of Sata 2 cables to test. My MB Sata ports are Sata 2, while the HDD's are both Sata 3. We'll see what happens.

BTW, there are plenty of articles related to loose Sata cables on the web.... I guess the first ones that were produced did not fit some drives properly leaving a lot of ppl with crashed systems.

 

This turned out to be another waste of time and money..... The Sata 2 cables arrived and they fit very nice and snug, but when I turned the system back on they wouldn't detect either of the Sata drives. I had to switch back to the old crappy loose fitting cables once more.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

 

Hello

Don't know if this will help, but I had a similar problem some years back.

IDE (PATA) drives, both XP and Linux were being recognised.
I switched to SATA, and again, both were recognised, but when I tried to add PATA drives again, they were not recognised.

I spent a lot of time on LINUX help sites searching for answers, and it seems that when GRUB bootloader switched from recognising PATA to recognising SATA, it did not go back to also recognise PATA whilst SATA drives were still connected.

As I say, this was some years back. I had assumed it would have been fixed by now. Maybe it has not?

I had been advised on how to edit grub to overcome the limitation, but I no longer have the information.

 

OOPS..... Forgot to update this thread to SOLVED.

Sounds like your issue was the opposite of mine Priscus.... fun huh? :b

In my case, I ended up flashing the BIOS with a slightly newer version which resolved the SATA cable problem along with 2 other improvements. (Away went "Not enough space in NVRAM", and system speed went way up).

Thanks just the same......

Wolf

 

Similar issue.
Bios set to boot to a particular (bootable) drive. I had a second bootable drive also installed. I guess the computer didnt know what to do, , , , Swapped 2nd drive with a "non-bootable" drive & no problem. (I have 3 external swappable drive bays/trays so the swapping is/was easy.
I would highly recommend swappable trays rather than multibooting on one hdd.
One computer swaps XP 32, 64, Ubuntu, Mint mate, and mint cinnamin. Have to turn off comp for swapping OS's, secondary drives are 'hot swappable'.

I know "SOLVED", but, a suggestion, , , , ,

 

Have always put OS onto their own (not shared) physical drive.

Thanks for the heads-up, cornermuse, I will give some swappable bays a try.

Machine upon which I tend to try out operating systems has huge beefy PSU, and one of those gigantic Lian Li towers on wheels, so oodles of room for drives, so typically have a dozen or so on board. Have had it operating multi-boot until quite recently. Now, have opted to have all the OSs as bootable disks, and enter BIOS and use the 'Boot Order' option to select my operating system. It may sound an onerous task, but it is far easier than having to edit Boot files when I remove operating systems.

Had intended to install a Bootmanager, to keep the process completely independent of all the OSs, but have not found the time to search out which would be most suitable.

Having the 'most used' on swappable, and a library of the 'less used', to access in the way I already do, could be worth pursuing.

PS Mate and Cinnamon on the same machine: I am intrigued. Might I ask why, or are you just comparing both DTEs?