Shared Knowledge

"SATA Drive will not Boot"

3 November 2009

Recently attempted to install Windows XP on new 500GB SATA drive. Direct SATA drive support off desktop motherboard.

Windows would appear to install but then at first reboot, nothing. New Windows installation would not boot.

Checked cables, power connections to new drive, attempted to install XP again. Again, at first reboot, nothing.

Finally, suspecting perhaps a bad hard drive, I removed drive from system and while turning new drive over and over in my hands, noticed on label reference to a jumper setting that limited drive to 150mbps.

Now when SATA drives were first released, their rated interface speed was 150mbps (megabits per second) but then 300mbps drives appeared and think all new drives are 300mbps.

For some reason, I assumed that all 300mbps drives were backward compatible with 150mbps motherboard interfaces. Well, they are not.

Once I jumper limited the 500GB SATA drive to 150mbps, after installing XP, the drive booted properly.

Still a problem with the drive? Don't think so. The motherboard I am using with this drive is older and probably only supports 150mbps transfers.

So bottom line is that if you are having trouble with a SATA drive, might be that your motherboard can not support 300mpbs and you will have to jumper limit the drive to the older 150mbps transfer rate.