k8T cannot see big SATA drive(s)

Tryin' to build a Mepis linux box. It has two 80Gb PATA drives in a
software RAID1, two 80GB PATA drives in a RAID1 off an Adaptec 2400A.
Everything works great. I have just tried to install a 500GB WD SATA
(WD5000KSRTL) drive and it is not seen at boot (I get a '...bios not
installed, hit g to continue' message).

I took these drives home and my Asus A7N8x spun both of them up and
recognized them fine, so they're not DOA. I have tried all manners of
cables to no effect. These drives came with a 'new style' SATA cable
with a wide drive-end plug that covers a good bit of the drive and
instructions about using the molex(?) connector with it to supply
power. Did that. Also pulled the Adaptec controller in case there is a
contention issue with drive device assignments.

Am I missing anything here? Is there a history of the SATA on these
boards going bad? Perhaps these drives are 'too new' for the board.
It's been great otherwise. I suppose a SATA PCI card would solve things
but, for various reasons, the loss of the PCI slot would hurt.

thanks for pointers,

s-a

semi-ambivalent wrote:
> Tryin' to build a Mepis linux box. It has two 80Gb PATA drives in a
> software RAID1, two 80GB PATA drives in a RAID1 off an Adaptec 2400A.
> Everything works great. I have just tried to install a 500GB WD SATA
> (WD5000KSRTL) drive and it is not seen at boot (I get a '...bios not
> installed, hit g to continue' message).
>
> I took these drives home and my Asus A7N8x spun both of them up and
> recognized them fine, so they're not DOA. I have tried all manners of
> cables to no effect. These drives came with a 'new style' SATA cable
> with a wide drive-end plug that covers a good bit of the drive and
> instructions about using the molex(?) connector with it to supply
> power. Did that. Also pulled the Adaptec controller in case there is a
> contention issue with drive device assignments.
>
> Am I missing anything here? Is there a history of the SATA on these
> boards going bad? Perhaps these drives are 'too new' for the board.
> It's been great otherwise. I suppose a SATA PCI card would solve things
> but, for various reasons, the loss of the PCI slot would hurt.
>
> thanks for pointers,
>
> s-a


This has been fixed with more monkeying around with power and signal
cables, and jumpering the drive down to SATA 1 spec. (well, duh...)