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PCHearn · 11-01-2008, 08:42 PM

I have a Dell 531 with an AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ with 2 GB of RAM. I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro. It took a lot of work, but I finally have all the drivers. Cool. The PC came with one SATA hard drive and a SATA DVD drive. I just installed a second SATA hard drive and the PC will not recognize it. I did some testing with the 4 SATA ports on the motherboard. Only ports 0 and 1 seem to work. No matter which of the three drives I connect to ports 0 and 1, they show up fine. I tried all combinations, 1 drive, 2 drives, and 3 drives. Any of the 3 drives work OK in port 0. Any 2 of the 3 drives work OK in ports 0 and 1. Ports 2 and 3 do not work at all. Ports 0 and 1 work fine. Is there something I need to set, like jumpers or something, on the motherboard to turn on SATA ports 2 and 3? Is there a setting in the BIOS? If there is any additional information you need in order to help me, please let me know. Thank you for any help you can give me.

I looked at the BIOS settings and I can't find any place to turn on or off the SATA ports. I have a WD500 hard drive connected to SATA port 0, the CD/DVD drive connected to SATA port 1, and a WD40 hard drive connected to SATA port 2. In the BIOS, under the HDD Group Boot Priority, it shows "3rd Master: WDC WD5000AAKS-75YGA0" and under the CD-ROM Group Boot Priority, it shows "4th Master: HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GSA-H73N". Does the reference to 3rd and 4th masters indicate anything unusual? It appears that my Dell 531 uses an ASUS M2N61-AX motherboard (manufactured by Gigabyte?) that is specifically designed for Dell machines. Does any of this shed any light on why my SATA ports 2 and 3 are not working?

By the way, this is what is on the main page of the BIOS:

Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility

System Date...
System Time...

Floppy A [Disabled]
SATA 0 WDC WD5000AAKS-75YGA0
SATA 1 HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GSA-H73N
SATA 2 None
SATA 3 None
HDD SMART [Disabled]

The Floppy A and HDD SMART entries are in blue and are changeable. The SATA ports are in black and are not changeable. And I have a WD40 drive connected to port 2.

11-01-2008, 08:42 PM	#1 (permalink)
PCHearn Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 4 OS: XP	I have a Dell 531 with an AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ with 2 GB of RAM. I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro. It took a lot of work, but I finally have all the drivers. Cool. The PC came with one SATA hard drive and a SATA DVD drive. I just installed a second SATA hard drive and the PC will not recognize it. I did some testing with the 4 SATA ports on the motherboard. Only ports 0 and 1 seem to work. No matter which of the three drives I connect to ports 0 and 1, they show up fine. I tried all combinations, 1 drive, 2 drives, and 3 drives. Any of the 3 drives work OK in port 0. Any 2 of the 3 drives work OK in ports 0 and 1. Ports 2 and 3 do not work at all. Ports 0 and 1 work fine. Is there something I need to set, like jumpers or something, on the motherboard to turn on SATA ports 2 and 3? Is there a setting in the BIOS? If there is any additional information you need in order to help me, please let me know. Thank you for any help you can give me. I looked at the BIOS settings and I can't find any place to turn on or off the SATA ports. I have a WD500 hard drive connected to SATA port 0, the CD/DVD drive connected to SATA port 1, and a WD40 hard drive connected to SATA port 2. In the BIOS, under the HDD Group Boot Priority, it shows "3rd Master: WDC WD5000AAKS-75YGA0" and under the CD-ROM Group Boot Priority, it shows "4th Master: HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GSA-H73N". Does the reference to 3rd and 4th masters indicate anything unusual? It appears that my Dell 531 uses an ASUS M2N61-AX motherboard (manufactured by Gigabyte?) that is specifically designed for Dell machines. Does any of this shed any light on why my SATA ports 2 and 3 are not working? By the way, this is what is on the main page of the BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility System Date... System Time... Floppy A [Disabled] SATA 0 WDC WD5000AAKS-75YGA0 SATA 1 HL-DT-ST DVD+/-RW GSA-H73N SATA 2 None SATA 3 None HDD SMART [Disabled] The Floppy A and HDD SMART entries are in blue and are changeable. The SATA ports are in black and are not changeable. And I have a WD40 drive connected to port 2. Last edited by dai; 11-02-2008 at 08:43 PM.