Cannot get all 8 SATA III ports to show connection to HDD's on Gigabyte MW34-SP0

Hello,

New user looking for help. I have 8 HDD’s connected to the 8 Sata III ports on my Gigabyte MW34-SP0 motherboard but in the bios, only 4 show up.

sataports

I have tested the drives, SATA data cables, power cables and Sata III port headers on the motherboard. All appear to be working. I can see on the block diagram in the manual for the motherboard that there is a switch for 4x SATA III Ports/1 Chipset M.2 Socket but I do not have any M.2 drives connected to a chipset socket. I also checked in the BIOS in case this switch is an option that must be manually toggled but have been unable to find anything related to it. The manual in the motherboard also offers no information on this.

Running out of ideas for how to debug this issue any further. Any assistance would be appreciated.

1 Like

Do all drives have 4 or 5 pin sata power, do all power connectors have the same number of pins

Sometimes if the drive has 5 it’ll not like the 3.3v rail and this isn’t just limited to shucked drives

They are all 5 pin sata power cables. The drives are shucked but are all the same model (WDC WD160EDGZ). I assume if some of them work with the 3.3v pin, they should all work?

Happen to have any molex to sata adapters or tape, capton tape would work best

Sometimes they make revisions that changes stuff like that

I don’t have either on me but I should be able to pick up some molex → sata adaptors tomorrow pretty easily. I wasn’t aware that revisions could change things like this, but that suggestion actually seems like it tracks with the behaviour I’ve been seeing when testing the components.

under the chipset tab in bios there should be a sata config menu.
you can enable/disable devices there so maybe check to see if something is disabled in that menu.

One of the methods you can use here is to swap the cables between a working drive and a broken drive. If the error moves to the other port its the drive, if the error stays on the port it’s the port/motherboard.

At this point I wouldn’t make that assumption. Apply the fix to one of the broken drives and see what happens.

1 Like

Unfortunately I’ve checked that menu several times and made absolutely sure everything is enabled from the chipset configuration.

I could be wrong, but I think @GigaBusterEXE ’s suggestion to use a converter, is because molex doesn’t have 3.3v, so would not pass it on to the sata power connector?

His other suggestion of tape over the 3.3v pins would do the same. If one has a converter, it is less tricky to give it a go

Vs

Yeah I’ve got a molex power cord and can see that it only has the 4 pins. Hopefully I can pick up some molex → sata adaptors and see if eliminating the 3.3v pin fixes it.

1 Like

There is also the ever present warning of Molex to anything adaptors should not be trusted outright.

Its rare these days but they have a history of melting.

“Molex to SATA, lose all your data.”

1 Like

My suggestion was more of a see if it works kinda thing, if it turns out that’s the issue I would recommend using tape or snipping the 3.3v wire on sata power cables

2 Likes

4 SATA ports are shared with an M.2 slot. (see manual p.7)

Test if the SATA HDs show up as soon as you remove M.2 drives from all the chipset slots (you can have 1 m.2 boot drive connected to CPU for this test).

I haven’t looked closely, but there may even be an option in the BIOS to configure m.2 or SATA for these lanes.

1 Like

It was the 3.3v pin… Working with molex → sata cables.

working

I see that people do not seem to recommend using molex → sata long term so I’ll look into the other methods mentioned to disable the 3.3v pin.

I still cannot believe this kind of behaviour can be different within the same model. I never would have thought of this by myself. Thanks for the help everyone.

3 Likes

Power splitters are fine, you just need to ensure you’re using crimped connectors. The moulded connectors are a fire risk. (Though tape fix is even better).

Crimped:

Moulded:

This topic was automatically closed 273 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.