DescentBB

System:
Abit NF7-S/ Athlon 2500+ o/c 2125mhz
1GB Ram
GF 4 Ti4200 64meg
IDE2 - DVD Drive
CD/RW Drive
IDE1 - Maxtor 60gig drive
Zip 100
SATA1 - IBM 40gb drive (ata w/sata adaptor)
SATA2 - WD 36gb 10k rpm drive in removable cage

The WD drive isn't showing up as a drive....
Sata Control Panel shows the drive.
Device Manager shows a generic volume...
The drive list doesn't show the drive.

Drive is new, cage is new, cable is new - tried on other sata port with other drive disco'd, still didn't work. I'm stumped.

Does it show up in Disk Management? Make sure there's a partition on the drive, and that a drive letter is assigned to the partition.

and if it shows in disk management after it is formatted just double check TweakUI if you have it installed(or some other program of the sort) and make sure that drive is set to be displayed in case you played with it. that's what happened to me when I was setting up my external firewire drive in which I was setting as Z:/

Both the SATA ports work, I'm sure now, the ibm drive works fine on both, these drives don't work on either. I've taken them out of the raid cages and hooked them straight up, windows setup will see 1 (I have 2 of these drives here now, they're identical) and formatted it, and started copying files to it - the other drive the controller won't see at all... But neither still show up as a drive in windows. All drive letters are selected to be shown, so that isn't it. Doesn't show up in disk management either... And that generic volume is actually for the zip drive I found out

Ok you have the SATA enabled in BIOS and the SI RAID drivers installed in windows or you wouldnt see that far. Make sure the drive is formatted and has a partition in diskmgmt.msc, double check all your BIOS settings anyway.

Another thought, if the drive doesn't show or initlize in diskmgmt.msc try removing the "generic volume" from device manager completely and reboot.

If I didn't, the ibm drive wouldn't work on the sata

Well, turns out it was a bios issue...

Unfortunately, now that I updated the bios and restarted the machine, it won't post anymore.

So unless ya'll got any ideas on that, I'd say I'm pretty screwed until I get another board.

bios chips are pretty cheap

Where does one get a bios chip for an NF7-S?

Did you try clearing the cmos? I updated my NF7-S to the latest version while searching for better overclocking options and it didn't cause any problems.

Yea, I tried that, but I found where to get a replacement, so no worries.

Well I'll be a son of a gun... Apparently, my NF7-S is a v2.0.. not a 1.0 or 1.2 like I thought, there was my error in the first place. I didn't think it was new enough. Hmmph. Now I gotta order a different chip... man I can't seem to win for losing this week.

Heh, that explains it then. Next time you will remember to read the PCB and make sure you get the right bios version. I have a NF7-S 2.0, got it right after the NF7-S first came out, so there really aren't that many revision 1 NF7-S boards out there, it is not surprising you got a 2.0.

Well, I did a hot-flash in another system and now I've got it back up and working... however, the damn sata drive still isn't working....

Try a Napalm Rocket or Smart Missle by any chance?

I may just have to face the fact that these drives may never work with this sata controller.