hi guys,

i have a dell dimensions 9150

motherboard is a dxp051,

which have four sata ports ,only two of these are being used ,both for the two hard drives, so this leaves two free.

i have a VIA 6421L PCI-Card which works perfect with the sammy drives.

but i am unable to get my computer set up on the spare sata ports for the hitachi drives.

does anybody else with the 9150 have the same problems or does any body know how to sort it.

i have tried enabling the spare sata in the bios setup , but when they are enabled the computer says on startup ,unable to find drive blah ,blah on sata port 3 or which ever sata port i open

i have swapped the hard drives onto different sata ports and they work no problem on the other ports.
.........................................................

i have just been into my bios settings, this is how they are setup.

sata operations (these are the four options i have)

raid autodetect /ahci (this is what my computer is set to)
raid auto detect /ata
raid on
combination

raid autodetect /ahci = raid if signed drivers,otherwise ahci

raid auto detect /ata= raid if signed drivers,otherwise ata

raid on = sata is configured for raid on every boot

combination = sata/pata combination mode.

it goes on to say
the factory default setting is raid autodetect /ahci
note that changing to and from the combination mode will change how the drives are listed.
the informationfor the drives will not reflect these changes untill after a reboot.

if you try to alter anything this warning message comes up

sata operation is being changed.attention changing these settings may prevent your operating system from booting,or may require a reinstall,are you sure you would like to continue.

this is all the info i can find ,

hope this will help you try and solve my problem.
regards
didineedthis

I'm having the exact same problem with my dell dimensions 9150
/dxp051

I have a WD3200KS (which works fine) and a WD5000KS (which doesn't)

I've tried all the settings:
raid autodetect /ahci (my computer was set to this setting too)
raid auto detect /ata
raid on
combination

I discarded the "sata operation is being changed..." message and Windows still boots in some cases (after an error message from my bios)

None of the settings will get the bios nor Windows to recognize the second harddisk.

At first I thought the harddrive was broken so I sent it back to my supplier. The drive was tested, but no problems were found.

SATA seems so much easier than PATA...

cant help the OP with the original request....
but concerning the non working sata drives.

i recently swapped out all the sata HD's in one of the servers at work and none of them wanted to know.
in the end we traced it down to a jumper on the new HD which would force sata 150gb compatibilty (the drives were nativly set for sata 300gb)

personaly i would have thought the days of messing around with jumpers on HDs had long gone, but apparently not

Hi,

what is it exactely that you are trying to do? Are you trying to connect your xbox hitachi dvd rom via the dell 9150 onboard sata?

I may be able to help as I have the same PC and had problems at certain stages doing the whole thing. I finally managed to flash my hitachi 0078 rom on this after racking my brain, searching other forums and spending the weekend trying to work to do it.