Member Avatar for Frank6490

I have an ASUS M3N78-VM mobo with WD 350g SATA drive running Win XP. Everything has been good for about 7 months but I now have intermittent problems when powering up the machine. From a cold start the SATA drive is not recognized in the bios and I get a BIOS message to put in a bootable media. If I leave the power on for 5-10 minutes and then hit reset or CTRL-ALT_DEL the machine reboots and the drive is recognized by the BIOS. Its intermittent in that sometimes I need to reset several times. Sometimes as soon as I enter BIOS setup the drive is recognized. I've tried the following:
- flashed the mobo BIOS
- plugged drive into different SATA port and power connector
with no success.
I also ran WD Data Lifequard which shows no errors

Incidentally the SATA DVD drive is always successfully recognized.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to diagnose further.

Thanks in advance
All with no success.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by splauber

Dani AI

Generated

Building on the troubleshooting ideas from , and others, here’s a focused, practical checklist and why each step matters. The pattern — “not seen on cold boot but OK after waiting or a reset” — most often points to a drive spin-up / power-sequencing issue or an early-stage SMART/mechanical fault, not a Windows driver problem. The goal is to isolate: drive vs power supply vs motherboard.

Short, prioritized checks (fast to do)

  • Listen and observe at cold power-on: delayed spin, repeated attempts or clicking are a mechanical/firmware sign.
  • Power-isolate the drive: disconnect other drives/peripherals and boot with only the suspect drive powered; if it appears reliably, overall PSU load or cabling is suspect.
  • Try a self-powered USB-to-SATA dock or an alternate PSU: if the drive always appears when powered separately, the motherboard/PSU is likely at fault.
  • Capture boot logs (cold boot) for drive errors: boot a Linux live USB and check kernel messages and SMART. Example commands to run from the live environment:
    dmesg | grep -i ata
smartctl -a /dev/sdX

    Review SMART attributes for Spin_Retry_Count, Reallocated_Sector_Ct and Current_Pending_Sector — these reveal marginal drives even when quick diagnostics report “no errors.”

If those tests are inconclusive

  • Measure the SATA power connector voltages during startup (or swap in a known-good PSU); significant sag at spin-up or flaky Molex/SATA power cables will cause the exact symptom you describe. If you’re not comfortable probing live voltages, skip this and use a known-good PSU instead.
  • Check the motherboard for bulging caps or corroded power connectors; intermittent power sequencing can be hardware/board related.

Final note: back up data immediately. If SMART shows odd counts or the drive exhibits delayed/erratic spin behavior, replacement is the safest option (as discovered). If the drive checks out and the problem persists, focus on PSU and motherboard power rails next.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for abu taher

Are you sure your hard drive is ok now? I think check it an another pc for confirm. cause you try many way.

Member Avatar for birellar

I believe that the problem is with the i865 chipset. A friend of mine, whom I assisted setting up his new computer has the following setup:

ASUS P4P800 motherboard with i865 chipset
A Seagate 7200.7 160 GB SATA as boot drive
A Seagate 7200.7 plus 160 GB PATA as backup/storage drive (PATA for backwards compatibility) in a mobile rack

When both drives are powered on and BIOS is set to boot from the SATA everything is OK.

Member Avatar for splauber

I am having the exact same problem with a P5k PRO ASUS board with P35 chipset. I am using a WD150 Velociraptor 10000 RPM drive. I cannot remember if I started having these problems when I installed a second SATA drive or not.

How many HDD do you have installed?

Member Avatar for jp26198926

try to use another good and working power supply..

Member Avatar for Tjmahone

I agree with Abu, try it in a different computer with a different cable. If it works, try it in a different computer with the same cable. If that doesn't work, it was the cable.

Member Avatar for splauber

I believe the issue is resolved now. I ran a couple of disk checks but the tests were showing passed. I changed the drive to another controller, still not working. Changed the cable, still not working. Connected the drive to a known good controller and cable (my other HDD is fined) and it still did not work. I purchased a new drive. No problem. It is my opinion that the HDD is going bad. Called WD and got a new drive sent. Seems to be working fine now.

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