ubuntu does not detect SATA drives with a XFX nForce 750a SLI motherboard

hello,

please make sure you have the latest bios update for your motherboard. then check the bios to see if the SATA controllers are enabled and if it can auto detect the drives. There may be some other switches in the bios you could toggle on/off to try to resolve the problem like ATAPI/SCSI or AHCI enable/disable.

Hi, I am also having the same exact issue. I also have the XFX nForce 750a SLI motherboard, Phenom X3. My mb detects my drives and I can boot up with Gparted to see all of them properly (ie /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 and /dev/hda) however in ubuntu 8.04/8.10 server/desktop it will not detect them.

In my Bios I have AHCI enabled and DID for Linux option enabled, SATA mode is also AHCI, SATA controller is enabled and also PATA controller (BIOS)

 I have spent about 5 hours non-stop adjusting settings.... I am certain I have tried almost all configurations.

From a tech at XFX...

"**** “The standard installer will not see any sata drives, or if you simply moved your Ubuntu drive to this system it will dump into the initrd prompt. To get the SATA drives detected:

· Boot the Ubuntu CD / HDD

· Jump into the Ubuntu boot loader by pressing ESC just as it detects the CD

· Edit the first option by pressing e

· Cursor down to the second line (starts with kernel) and press e

· Go to the end of the line and remove the splash option replacing it with 'pci=nomsi'

· Press enter and press b

The steps above should solve the failure to detect the SATA drives. A technical guide to PCI-MSI can be found here.
***(http://devresources.linux-foundation.org/dev/robustmutexes/src/fusyn.hg/Documentation/MSI-HOWTO.txt)

Video

Once you get your system going video will NOT work, barely even VESA will work. Here are the steps I took to get it going:

· Boot up the system to the command line

· Run '/etc/init.d/gdm stop' and kill off any X processes

· Login and install the envyng-core package via 'sudo apt-get install envyng-core'

· Execute the envyng video card installer via 'envyng -t'

· Follow the prompts installing the Nvidia 177 driver

· Copy this file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, backing up your old xorg.conf

· Run '/etc/init.d/gdm start'

· After you login, you may want to run the following command on login: 'nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1', it may help your performance.

· Enjoy accelerated video

SATA Update 11/02/2008: I recently found the following page about the nForce 730a (8200) chipset which lists a SATA fix similar to mine. It seems this should be fixed in Linux 2.6.26+

NViDIA Update 11/03/2008: Updating your 177.79 nvidia drivers to 177.80 from the Ubuntu repository will greatly help sluggish graphics. (tested on Ubuntu 8.10)”****"

The caveat included from the Tech is... " Keep in mind we don`t officially support linux. However I emailed you some steps that should help. "

This got my SATA drives noticed for the first time......