SATA discs disappear in Windows XP

[ripper079]

Athlon XP 3200+
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (Rev 1012)
1,5GB RAM PC3200
Seagate 200GB IDE (Windows partition)
2 X Seagate 120GB SATA (striping)
GeForce 6800 GT
CI-6A21 300W


After having tons of problem with my Windows XP installation I finally got it to work (with service pack 2). After installing appropriate drivers to all the hardware components all seemed to work fine. But after 4 days the 2 SATA discs just went down. BIOS doesn´t report any errors about the discs but when WinXP starts its not there. I´ve also downloaded some app from Seagate to fix the problem but with no luck. Norton AntiVirus hasn´t detected any form of virus. Does anybody have a clue why the discs are gone?

[JarJarBinks]

i dont have a solution about your drives, but id just like to
say that some thigns good do come easy in life.

but you could try with your drives, unpluging them from the power supply starting up windows then shutting the system down
then use different power adapters if oyu have some free
and see if they appear again on restart.

since they already appear in the bios i dont know if thei swill have an effect but hey its worth a try if you havent done so yet.

[Waldo2k2]

fist off...why do you have 1.5 gb of ram?? that's completely unneccessary, and having the third chip of 512 is keeping you from running dual channel, so adding the extra 512 is actually slowing your system down....
Second...you're running 3 high performance drives and a nvidia 6800 off of a 300w power supply? Are you freaking crazy??? you need at least 400w to be safe with that config, I'm surprised that it even shows the discs in bios.

Here's my theory: not having a big enough psu is causing your hard drives to fail once you get into windows because once that happens, your graphics card starts to suck some juice (it's not just running vga compatible, white-text-on-black-background anymore) so you can no longer use the drives. Seriously, I'm surprised that psu has lasted 4 days.

[JarJarBinks]

wow lol he is right i hardly ever looked at your spec's lol

[ripper079]

Hmmm you are probably right guys. I´ve been having this PSU since I purchased the computer and because i havn´t experienced any problem until now I thougt it was okey. I´ve desided to order a new PSU and I´m thinking of a Antec True Power 480W ATX...or maybe do you guys have a better option? Ideal PSU should be as quit as possible and have around 450W.

...and having the third chip of 512 is keeping you from running dual channel, so adding the extra 512 is actually slowing your system down....

That is strange...according to the A7N8X-E manual page 2-9 Dual channel is supported if the following memory bank are occupied

1. DIMM_A1 and DIMM_B1 or
2. DIMM_A2 and DIMM_B1 or
3. DIMM_A1 and DIMM_A2 and DIMM_B1

and I have 3 identical memory modules.

[Waldo2k2]

>># DIMM_A1 and DIMM_A2 and DIMM_B1

true, but what it does is split the three chips into two channels. So you're essentially running 2 chips, one is a gig, one is 512. It's not the same performance as 2 identical chips. Trust me, a gig and a half is over-kill, I'd personally sell one of the chips.

and that psu should be just fine for you.