Chaintech VNF4/Ultra Maxtor Diamondmax 10 SATA not detectable/problem

[xAIRPOWERx]

I would very much appreciate if someone could help me work through this problem I am having with my new system build.

I have a Chaintech VNF4 Ultra motherboard

http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=13&PISNo=318

with a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300 gig SATA hard drive

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxto...0Hard%20Drives/Desktop/DiamondMax%2010

and have failed to detect the hard drive and can thus cannot install windows upon it.

I have tried the drivers that came with the motherboard as well as the updated versions from nvidia on a floppy and hitting F6 to install them in the windows XP install process to no avail.

I have tried every possible bios setting and every possible SATA port/cable. The bios does not detect the drive on the "detecting raid array" screen when I enable the applicable sata ports. The drive HAS power and is spinning (can feel vibration when held in my hand).

Nothing I have done is working and I cannot find any help via google searches.

Chaintech's customer support has failed to email me back after 4 days.

If someone who has experience, preferably with this board and SATA drives, please walk me through how one would "normally" get a SATA drive to detect on this board, whether you have the same drive or not.

Thank you.

 

[Ackbar]

Don't wait for Chaintech to email you back, they're slow at times.

Originally posted by: Jimmystyle
The Tech Support # in the U.S. is 510-656-3607. I've been able to call them and get a tech on the phone immediately.

Other contact info from the back of this motherboard's manual:

<Headquarter>
For Asia, Africa, Australia and Pacific
Island:
CHAINTECH COMPUTER CO., LTD
4F.-5, No.16, Jian 8th Rd., Zhonghe City,
Taipei County 235, Taiwan
Tel: +886-2-8226-8188
Fax: +886-2-8226-8199
URL: http://www.chaintech.com.tw
E-mail: sales@chaintech.com.tw

For France, Europe:
AELT COMPUTER
5 rue de Rome 93561 Rosny Sous Bois
Cedex France
Tel: +33-1-4855-5940
Fax: +33-1-4855-5942
URL: http://www.chaintech-france.com
E-mail: infos@chaintech-france.com
RMA: rma@chaintech-france.com
Technical Support:
support@chaintech-france.com

For Australia: (VGA only)
Protac International Computers Australia
Sydney Headquarters:
95 Derby St. Silverwater, NSW 2128
Tel: +61- 2-8748-8888
Fax: +61-2-8748-8801
http://www.protac.com.au
Melbourne:
Unit 7, 2 Sarton Rd, Clayton VIC 3168
Tel: +61-3-9560-7188
Fax: +61-3-9560-7288

For America:
CHAINTECH AMERICA CORP.
4427 Enterprise St. Fremont CA 94538, U.S.A.
Tel: +1-510-656-3648
Fax: +1-510-656-2297
URL: http://www.chaintechusa.com
E-mail (Sales): sales@chaintechusa.com
Technical Support:
Tel: +1-510-656-3607
Email:support@chaintechusa.com

For Korea:
CHAINTECH KOREA CO., LTD.
14F, Mi-Won B/D, Yeouido-Dong 43,
Youngdeunpo-Gu, Seoul, Korea
Tel: +82-2-6332-3377
Fax: +82-2-6332-3379
URL: http://www.chaintechkorea.com
E-Mail: sales@chaintechkorea.com

For China:
CHAINTECH, SHENZHEN
Room 301, Nanguang Building, No.1004,
Huafu Rd, Futian District,Shenzhen, China
518041
Tel: +86-755-8368-9072
Fax: +86-755-8368-9053
CHAINTECH, BEIJING
Room 3A05, 4 Floor, Unit No. B1, Longrange
World Office Building 2, No.18 Suzhou Street,
Haidian District, Beijing, China 100080
Tel: +86-10-6265-0087
Fax: +86-10-6262-0267
URL: http://www.chaintech.com.cn;
http://www.chaintech.cn
E-MAIL: service@chaintech.com.cn

Good luck!

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

Can anyone else help me trouble shoot this problem?

I'd rather not use the hard drive as a 200 dollar paper weight .

 

[mystere]

I don't have a chaintech, but I do have a Gigabyte K8NXP, and I had a similar problem. You have to turn off the RAID features (all of them) before the board will detect the drive. On the gigabyte, disabling RAID made it seem like it was disabling the controllers, but it's not. Maybe that's your problem?

 

[MajorPayne]

Originally posted by: xAIRPOWERx
Can anyone else help me trouble shoot this problem?

I'd rather not use the hard drive as a 200 dollar paper weight .

Your first issue is to get the drive detected in BIOS -- this MUST be done, or the computer will never recognize it anywhere else. I believe that mystere is correct in that the RAID capabilities of the BIOS for the SATA channel you are using MUST be disabled for it to recognize your drive in BIOS. Once you have the drive recognized in BIOS, I have heard from others with this board that you are NOT required to press F6 and load the RAID drivers, that the board/windows will be able to recognize a non-RAID SATA drive natively.

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

Thanks.

I'll give it a shot this weekend.

 

[Glpster]

I really don't have anything useful to tell you as far as getting your mb to recognize your harddrive.

But, it may be notable that I installed my SATA 250 GB DiamondMax 10 on a VNF4/Ultra without a hitch. I did not make a single change to the bios before doing so either. I used the drivers that came with the motherboard.

So, unless you initially made changes to the Bios (or your board came with different default settings), then you may have a problem with your mb or drive.

I had only one other drive (a DVD rewriter) connected as master to the 2nd IDE port, a floppy drive, and 2 sticks of 512MB PQI memory installed at the time. (And the video card, of course).

Hope the info is of some use to you.

 

[gobucks]

i had the same problem both with an A8N-SLI and the VNF4/Ultra. I think it's a compatibility issue. I'm not sure if it's a BIOS problem or a firmware issue, but I'd recommend downloading the newest of each. The latest VNF4/Ultra beta is pretty good, the only gripe is that my CPU shows up as like 100MHz when I overclock it past 2.3GHz, but it still runs fin, so I can't complain. Also, my memory errors in 1T at any speed, but I can't tell if it's a winchester mem controller problem, or a BIOS one. Also, I think maxtor is aware of problems with the drive and has issued new firmware. I returned my drive a while ago, so i can't say if it works or not. I recommend updating everything, and if it's still a no-go, then RMA it. Just grab a cheap little IDE hard drive to hold you over until they 1) straigthen the maxtors out or 2) Seagate's 7200.8's and Hitachi's 7K500's with 16MB cache make it to market. That's what I'm doing.

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

I can't update the firmware if the bios doesn't even know the drive is there :/.

Sadly I cannot RMA the drive since I bought it OEM and it's past the 15 day return window (guess I shouldn't have bought from winland after all).

Hmm, I just don't know what to do.

If I can't get it working tonight it's time to order a new drive and throw this one in the trash .

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

No luck.

Still can't detect the drive.

The best I can do is get it to skip past detecting ide hard drives (because I disconnect them) and then it goes into "detecting ide hard drives" again and stays on that screen for 5+ minutes and I have to turn it off.

I agree that testing another sata drive would help, or testing the drive in another comp on another mobo, but those options are not open to me right now .

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

Bump just in case someone can read this and help me.

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

Help?

Please?

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

Anyone get this HD to work with this motherboard?

 

[MajorPayne]

Originally posted by: xAIRPOWERx
Anyone get this HD to work with this motherboard?

Unfortunately, I do not have anything to offer, since I am using older SATA drives with my VNF4. My one suggestion would be to contact maxtor support, and explain that you are having an issue with this drive, and an Nforce4 board. I have heard that these Maxtor drives have issues with ALL Nforce 4 boards, so they may be able to help you where Chaintech cannot. Good luck (and if that fails, do not toss the drive, send it my way, and I can play with it!)

 

[xAIRPOWERx]

I tried the drive on someone's via based mobo and it worked fine.

I think the problem is the motherboard bios but it could be the drive as well.

Still no luck getting it to detect.