davesurrey wrote:
> Have been using XP Pro with an AsRock ConroeXFire-eSata2 mobo and two sata
> HDDs and it' s been nice and stable.
> Now trying to add a third SATA drive but although the BIOS sees the third
> drive it doesn't show in XP (neither an icon in my computer nor in Disk
> Management.)
> I formatted this third drive by disconnecting the second one temporarily so
> windows would recognise it and then format and make active in Disk
> Management.
> But reconnecting back all 3 disks I can only see two again, except in the
> BIOS.
> Bios is AMI P1.40 09/06/2006.
> To me this looks like a Windows and/or driver issue and not BIOS as the bios
> sees the three drives. But I could be wrong.
> Help please.
> Thanks
>
>

Verify how the Southbridge ports are set up.

The ICH7 has four SATA and an IDE connector, capable of handling six disks.
Intel splits these up as three groups of two, for the purposes of this
discussion. Two SATA behave like an old ribbon cable, so that is why
I think of them as working in pairs.

If a person wanted to install Win98, Win98 expects command and control
addresses in the I/O space, and the disks to be at IRQ14 and IRQ15. Intel
set up a mode, called the "legacy" mode, where any four disks could be
mapped to look like that. But the four disks would be arranged in pairs.
For example, if in "legacy" mode, the four SATA could work as if they
were two ribbon cables, but that would leave the IDE port disabled.
Or, you could use a pair of SATA, the second pair of SATA would be
disabled, and the IDE port would work. Legacy supports four of six
potential drive spots.

Your symptoms sound like the system was installed, while the chipset
was in legacy mode.

In Native mode, all six disks can be used at the same time. All disks
are mapped into the PCI address space. (Command and control registers
are an offset to the PCI Base Address Register or BAR.) Win2K and
WinXP have native mode drivers that understand this PCI mapping, when
a certain minimum Service Pack is being used.

Looking in the manual, the BIOS default appears to be Enhanced. So if you
hadn't touched the settings, all would be fine. (I've seen
at least one product, that uses a Legacy setting as the default.) I'm
looking at PDF page 50. Enhanced is the one I'd use. "Compatible"
is the Legacy operating option, and will limit the number of working
ports to four of six.

http://download.asrock.com/manual/Co...ire-eSATA2.pdf

So the question is, what would happen if you change the BIOS setting,
while an existing OS is installed ?

Maybe someone else knows the answer to that. I'm not going to guess.

Generally, you want to select the exactly right settings on page 50,
before installing any OS, because the consequences of a mistake, mean
lots of cleanup work later. For example, on Intel chipsets, moving
between RAID for boot, and non-RAID for boot, in terms of drivers,
is a PITA.

For some background on Native versus Legacy, Intel has this document.
It doesn't explain everything, but will give a few hints about how it
works.

(SATA Programmers Reference Manual - PDF page 11 is best)

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/manuals/252671.htm

Paul