featherynscale: Schmendrick the magician from The Last Unicorn (Default)
featherynscale ([personal profile] featherynscale) wrote2008-01-17 07:18 pm

And I always tell people a monkey could do hardware... I guess I'm not much of a monkey

Anybody local got a spare SATA drive sitting around? I've built [livejournal.com profile] triadruid's new PC, and for some reason which is not clear to me, the BIOS does not believe in the hard drive which is installed. I have checked relevant BIOS settings, switched out the SATA cable, turned the SATA cable 'round (even though they are allegedly omnidirectional), plugged the cable into a secondary site on the mobo (when it failed to work in the primary site), and generally done everything I can think of short of offering it virgin sacrifices.

So, if you know something about this sort of thing and have an intelligent question to ask ("Is the computer plugged in?" is not an intelligent question - please don't respond if you don't know anything about hardware), or if you have a spare SATA drive lying around that you could loan me so I could test to see if the drive itself is crapped out, I'd like to hear from you.

[identity profile] raginsouthasian.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
If drive is 300MB/s and mobo only has a 150MB/s interface maybe you have to set some jumpers.

[identity profile] featherynscale.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 01:50 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, the board is enabled for 300, and the drive is jumpered to choke back to 150...

[identity profile] raginsouthasian.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 01:52 am (UTC)(link)
Sorry, that's all I got :(

[identity profile] featherynscale.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
No, that was clever. I'm gonna check and see if changing that does anything useful. :)

[identity profile] ysabel.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 05:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Does the drive spin up on powerup? You can generally tell by putting your finger on it and then turning on the machine, the spinup generates some vibration.

[identity profile] featherynscale.livejournal.com 2008-01-18 05:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Seems to, yeah. It makes a whirrrr....click sound.