HP Desktop a420n Pavilion won't recognize SATA hard drive

[bobkor]

HI,

I installed a SATA hard drive as a second hard drive in my a420n Paviion desktop and it is not being recognized by the computer. I see no place in the BIOS to enable any SATA drives, only IDE drives. (The primary hard drive is IDE.) I just updated BIOS firmware to Revision 3.08 (11/2004, which is the latest on HP's web site), and there is still no place to enable SATA drives in the BIOS screen.

Of course, the drive cannot be seen in Windows XP either.

I've seen a posting on the web about SATA drives needing drivers to work with with the a420n, but I don't know if this is true. One guy talks about pressing the F6 key while rebooting so you can load the driver at that point, but pressing F6 does nothing to interupt the normal bootup process on my machine.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,

Bob

p.s. I tried 2 different SATA drives, an older one and a brand new one - same result

[TheOldMan]

According to this page: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=228&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=38843...   there is a newer BIOS but it does not state anything about the problem described.  There are drivers on that page for the hard drive controller, verify that they or newer ones are installed.  Just to verify that the SATA drive is connected properly and the power connection is good, can you feel the drive power up when the computer is turned on?  You should be able to feel a slight indication and or  hum, also.

[wb2001]

Did you set the BIOS to acknowledge EIDE and SATA (Both) under the Advanced menu.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07110&tmp_track_link=ot_recdoc/c00510352/en_u...

[bobkor]

To TheOldMan:

I actually have version 3.10 Revision of the BIOS firmware, not 3.08.  My mistake.

Also, I can feel the drive spinning when the computer is on.  Pretty sure the SATA cable is good, too.

To wb2001:

I went to the link you sent and viewed the BIOS screen shots there.  My BIOS Advanced screen does not look like the those screen shots.  Specifically, there is no "Onboard PATA/SATA Adapters"  selection and no "Onboard PATA/SATA Configuration" selection.

I searched the remaining BIOS screens, and there is no mention of SATA anywhere, only IDE.

:-(

- Bob

[TheOldMan · Accepted solution]

If the BIOS is not accepting any info about the drive being connected, then nothing else will.  It could be that controller just does not work.  On a board that old, it is probably not a worthwhile effort to try a hardware fix.

Using an external enclosure for the drive is probably the best bet.

[bobkor]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, just putting the internal SATA drive into a dock with USB.

I'm disappointed that HP would choose a motherboard with two SATA connections on it but not supply a BIOS that would allow me to actually use a SATA drive.

Thanks for your help.

- Bob

[wb2001]

http://www.ehow.com/how_5101076_install-xp-sata-hard-drive.html

You need the XP driver.

[compuwiznky]

In my experience, early SATA boards will only accept SATA 150, not SATA 300. SATA 3.0 is supposed to be downwardly compatible, but is not with all controllers. I am trying to fix one now that will accept a 120 GB seagate from 2005, but does not even see a brand new 500 GB Hitachi. I doubt that capacity could be the problem. Flashing bios did not even help. Now I am hunting for a brand new SATA 1.5 drive, or a workaround.