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Why can't my computer detect the 6th Sata drive?

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4wd:
Everything works fine now.  There's only one minor consenquence/inconvenience from all of this.  Apparently, the computer won't recognize the eSata as an external connection is my external connection manager software "USB Safely Remove".  Before, it did.  Now it recognizes my DVD drive as an external connection.  I guess whatever is connected to the GSata is considered an external device.  But it's no big deal I guess.-superboyac (July 29, 2009, 06:03 PM)
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Are the Intel SATA in AHCI mode in the BIOS?

superboyac:
Are the Intel SATA in AHCI mode in the BIOS?
-4wd (July 29, 2009, 07:53 PM)
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No they are not.  So I went into my bios and changed the setting for the Intel Sata from "Disabled" to "AHCI".  I did the same for the gigabyte sata setting.  I restarted Windows Xp and got the blue screen of death before it even loaded.  I changed the intel back to disabled and it loads fine now.  Why would that setting cause windows to crash?

f0dder:
Why would that setting cause windows to crash?
-superboyac (July 29, 2009, 10:30 PM)
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Because ATA and AHCI are two different protocols - and windows uses specific drivers for it's boot device. Thus it panics with an INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE BSOD when it's not seeing what it's expecting.

For other drives, it should pick up the change just fine, perhaps requiring you to install drivers first. Installing drivers isn't enough to fix the boot device issue though, you have to do registry hacks as well.

AHCI is required to take advantage of features like Native Command Queueing.

superboyac:
Thanks fodder.  I've been reading that now on the web, but your explanation is much clearer.  So should I go through the work and switch everything to AHCI?

I have an option for AHCI or RAID.  I have no intention of having a RAID array, but should I switch the setting to that?  Or should I leave my setting as Disabled?  Or should I choose AHCI?  From what I've read, I should do AHCI because it takes advantage of hot swapping.

Shades:
Likely a tip for the friend that had to use RAID...

Most (if not all) RAID controllers have a JBOD mode. JBOD stands for Just a Bunch Of Drives. As far as I know the RAID controller will not enable any RAID functionality on its controller that way. See the manual that came with the motherboard.

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