PCHearn

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.

dai

check if you need to load a driver to enable the ports

tonka_guy78

I had the same issue. After 2 hours - finally solved it.

start up and enter BIOS settings
->advaced
->integrated peripherals
->serial ATA configuration
->SATA controller - set to SATA 1-2

save and exit.

linderman

most motherboards have two sata controllers .....often times you have to install an extra driver to enable the second sata controller ....... try the above easier sata configuration first .......

linderman

BTW: did you install your motherboard chipset drivers

garybday

This worked...thanks for the information..

markxcool

Hi There!

I had this same issue when I tried to get my CDROM and 1T HD added.

The instructions worked perfectly. I am very grateful for this post (I Googled, "dell 531 install hard drive" and this thread was the 5th hit)

I registered on this forum just to be able to post this "thank you".

Much appreciated!

Cheers!

:D

linderman

MUCH APPRECIATED ......... glad we could help ...