Asus Rampage MB not recognizing Sata HDD

[NeoEnigma]

Hi. I just built my new system with the Asus Rampage Intel x48 motherboard. I've been having a few issues with it.

First of all, the stupid processor heatsink and fan has the worst mounting screws EVER. The POS plastic pieces keep coming out so when I turn my comptuter upright, it falls out sometimes and hangs there. I've tried countless times to make it secure. But that isn't my main issue...

With the computer booted up and I get the prompt to install Windows, I press enter and it tells me... no hard disk is installed. But it is. The exact same way it was an hour ago when it was attached to my previous motherboard. The only difference is a new power supply. I have a Thermaltake Tough Power 750w. I use the same cable to run my case's door fan, and the fan works great. So the parts connected to my HDD should be fine. I don't know why it won't read my hard drive.

I have an IDE drive as a backup, but I haven't tried it yet because my DVD-RW drive is also IDE, and the Rampage only has 1 IDE slow on the motherboard. Any ideas?

[erocker]

First of all, you need to take care of that HSF mounting problem. Go out and invest in a heatsink that uses a better mounting system. The intel push-pin design really bends the motherboard, making the heatsink at the top of the board not able to touch the chips thier cooling underneath. Plus, if you can't get it to stay on in the first place your going to end up doing damage to your CPU. Did you look in your bios for your HDD?

[NeoEnigma]

I did check in the BIOS for the hard drive and it wasnt listed in there. Someone suggested that the Hard drive and the DVD cannot both be set to master, but that is how they were configured in my last PC. I usually have a cd-rom drive set to master and all others set to slave, and a hard drive set to master and all others set to slave.

It was also suggested that I manually select the number of the SATA slot the HDD is plugged into and force it to realize it's a Hard Drive. I may try that.

The way I fixed the CPU issue for now is laying the tower down on its side, allowing the CPU to sit without any reason to fall off. But I definitely want something more secure (any suggestions?)

[erocker]

I would check what your CPU temps are first in the bios.

[NeoEnigma]

CPU temps are 31C at idle. Not sure if that's good or not.

I managed to get Windows XP installed on my 60GB IDE drive. I cannot for the life of me get it to see my SATA. I know it works. I hooked it up to my old system to check. Maybe my motherboard is bad. I dont know, Asus isn't open right now to call them.

I tried to manually set it in the Bios but it said "not detected." There were no correct options to set in the Bios to tell it what to use. My IDE HDD detected without any issues. I made it the master and my DVD drive the slave. The SATA drive was also a master.

But let me get this straight. When hooking up a Sata HDD, you need to run a 4-pin power connector from the PSU as well as the SATA power connector from the PSU as well? And then hook it to the motherboard? That's how I had it before and that's how I'm doing it now.

[oily_17]

Originally Posted by NeoEnigma

But let me get this straight. When hooking up a Sata HDD, you need to run a 4-pin power connector from the PSU as well as the SATA power connector from the PSU as well? And then hook it to the motherboard? That's how I had it before and that's how I'm doing it now.

You should only need the 15-pin SATA power cable from the PSU and your SATA data cable

[J-Man]

Push down on the 4 pins until it locks in.

[philbrown23]

I have this same problem with my maximus extreme, I think there are some asus boards with very poorly connected sata ports.