I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but my HP Pavillion desktop has lost a previously working SATA drive. It was a Maxtor secondary storage drive. The system drive is a Samsung SATA and it is working fine. I am running Windows XP media center edition SP2.
The Maxtor shows up in the BIOS and passes all SMART tests, but when Windows XP loads the drive is no where to be found. It is not listed in Disk Manager or Device Manager at all. I installed a new Western Digital 500GB SATA and got the same results. Put the Maxtor in a USB2 enclosure and there is was working fine with all the data. Ran an error check, defragged and it has been working fine as a USB external. The only clues I have as to why it didn’t work internally are some error messeges in the system logs during start up.
I find some error messages in the system logs after booting referencing source: atapi and event: 9 and 11. The following lines are copied from the event properies of these errors.
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort3, did not respond within the timeout period.
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort3.
I have updated the BIOS, swapped out SATA cables, ports and power connectors from the system drive with no change. I believe all the drives are SATA II/300 but something has to be different about them. I am suspecting a wierd virus, a registry issue or something in windows XP that is not recognizing the second SATA device. This one is very puzzling and has stumped anyone I have asked about it.