[Gumby]

I recently installed a 3rd SATA hard drive, and now my computer occasionally fails to boot up. When it does fail to boot up, I notice that it says "detecting array" and then it goes nowhere. Before I added the 3rd drive, it never had this message.

When it boots up properly, it doesn't go into "detecting array" mode.

Of course, I could probably remove the new drive to avoid this, but fixing this and being able to use all 3 drives would be preferred...

Edit: Just did a bit of reading and it looks like I have to disable RAID controller in the bios...

[!MiKrofT]

Yeah just change the setting in the BIOS so that it's not SATA RAID.

[Gumby]

Update: The BIOS setting already had RAID disabled. So it had to be something else.

The unusual message in full:

NVIDIA RAID IDE ROM BIOS
Copyright (C) 2004
Detecting array...

I had a DVD drive and a CD drive previously - both of which are on a single IDE channel - and I had removed the power plug for the CD drive after installing the 3rd SATA hd. After plugging the power back in, everything works fine now!

Doesn't make sense, but I suspect the BIOS was looking for that other IDE device.

[Preemo]

Unplug the IDE drive and see if it boots up.

[underscore]

Yeah I've had a similar issue if I move the power cable from my DVD drive to my third HDD. If I don't disconnect the SATA from the one without power, the computer freezes at the first Windows XP loading screen.

[Gumby]

Unplug the IDE drive and see if it boots up.
Yeah now I unplugged the CD drive completely (IDE cable & power) and the system boots up fine.

[Jsunu]

Where is the 3rd SATA HD connected to on the Motherboard?