BIOS can't recognize SATA HD

Hey guys, I posted this on a different forum, and since you guys are so great at solving things, I thought I would post here and kill 1 bird with 2 stones.

Heres the deal: I bought a SATA HDD when I built my new Athlon 64 system. The hard drive is a 120GB Samsung. I installed my HDD (plugged it into the mobo, and then supplied it with power) and I turned on my PC. I can hear the HDD in there clicking and trying to read. It'll click for a long time before the BIOS finally IDs it. The BIOS says "Samsung...." (..... = a whole bunch of number that I dont remember). And its almost like the BIOS freezes after it says that and wont go through to load Windows on my other HDD which is IDE.

The drive just clicks and tries to read but it wont stop clicking at times. I don't get it. I've had the thing for about 2 months and never have gotten it to work (although I never really put a lot of time into it until now).

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Update:
The cables and everything are secure. I cant check the drive in Disk Management because I cannot get Windows to load on my OTHER harddrive with this one plugged in. I have made a log of all my diagnostics and things that i've seen:

First of all:
I disabled SATA all together from within my BIOS when I didnt get this to work about a month ago for faster start up.
I have the Gigabyte "GA-K8NS Pro" motherboard with the nVIDIA nForce 3 250 chipset.
I have another PSU powering the drive while I run these diagnostics.

BIOS/Chipset settings relating to SATA:
1. Serial-ATA 2 (Internal PHY): Enabled
2. Onboard Serial-ATA: Enabled
3. Serial-ATA Function: RAID (option 2: BASE)

When Serial-ATA Function is set to "RAID" the BIOS goes through detecting the IDE Channels first and then goes to:

nVIDIA RAID IDE ROM BIOS 4.42
(copywrite information)

Detecting Array...
Sil 3512A SATA Raid BIOS version 4.3.47

Press <Ctrl+S> or F4 to enter RAID utility
0 Samsung SP1213C 114498MB

The BIOS seems to freeze right there.

Now, with the Serial-ATA Function set as BASE instead of RAID, it goes through all what it went through the first time, except it froze at "Verifying DMI Pool Data........". The HDD would then proceed to initialize itself (turn it on and click/read) then terminate.

I noticed that the HDD activity light was also solid when the HDD was plugged in. As soon as I removed it, the HDD act. light turned off and the BIOS proceeds (unfrozen).

When the BIOS checks the IDE Channels for drives it reads the IDE Channel 0 Master/Slave, IDE Channel 1 Master/Slave and detects my CD Drive and EIDE Hardrive. However, when it reads the remaining IDE Channels (2+3) this is what it says:

IDE Channel 2 Master: S_ATA1 - None
IDE Channel 3 Master: S_ATA2 - None

It doesn't recognize the harddrive there, but it recognizes the HDD when it initializes the "Sil 3512A SATA Raid BIOS".

When I plugged in my EIDE drive (I unplugged it just so I dont have to worry about Windows loading) to report back here, Windows loaded and then gave me a tooltip saying that it found new hardware and needed to install the drivers for it. Windows identified the new hardware as a "Mass Storage Controller". It then searched the internet and installed "Silicon Image Sil 3512 SATALink Controller". After the drivers were installed, I plugged the harddrive in while Windows was running and the HDD activity light once again turned solid and my HDD initialized itself. Then Windows freezed. I unplugged the HDD and once again the light turned off and Windows was unfrozen.

Well that's my log, I hope you can help me. :-(

The drive is bad and is not initializing properly. Samsung's diagnostic seems to have disappeared off of their website. You can use Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test to attempt to check it, located here:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

but if the drive will not spin up at all, then the diagnostic will not be able to access it to test. In that case, it's time to either RMA or trash it.

The drive spins just fine, but only for a few secs when it powers up or something is trying to read it. But I will test it. Thanks.

I know you said the cables were secure, but just double check again. Mine used to freeze at the "Verifing DMA data pool" screen too, and it ended up being the cable would slip out just a bit when I would put my case window back on. It would sometimes load into windows though, and then after a few min the drive would just disappear from 'my computer'. I didnt have windows installed on it tho

I just tried to do the tests, but it got to where it needed to read the IDE Channels 2+3 and it just stopped. Oh well, thats a bumber that I spent $80 on a HDD thats non-RMAable.

grimm003 said:

I know you said the cables were secure, but just double check again. Mine used to freeze at the "Verifing DMA data pool" screen too, and it ended up being the cable would slip out just a bit when I would put my case window back on. It would sometimes load into windows though, and then after a few min the drive would just disappear from 'my computer'. I didnt have windows installed on it tho

Click to expand...

Yeah but the BIOS wouldnt even recognize it when it scanned the IDE Channels. Whats wierd is that it didnt recognize it there, but it recognized it later on in the Sil 3512A SATA Raid BIOS.