SATA Connection

I have a Dell Dimension 5150 running W7 Home Premium 32bit. Recently the system has been stopping for no reason, then the hard drive whirrs and we are back running. The stopping became more frequent, and today the system stopped at the bios saying that it couldn't find the disk 0. I changed disk 0 to sata 1 and disabled sata 0 at the bios. System booted and worked with no problem. Checked sata cable by changing them over, but keeping to sata interface 1 on the motherboard. All OK so no problems with the cables. I need two drives as I have my system setup as Sata 0 System Drive, Sata 1 Backup drive. I take daily incremental backups. How can I determine if Sata interface 0 really is broken on the Motherboard and is the only real solution a new board.
There are only two Sata interfaces on the board.

Thanks for any help

 

Hi and welcome to MG ... heres a link here that I hope will determine your problem...........................

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim5150/en/sm/tshoot1.htm#wp1114195

 

Thanks for that. I downloaded the diagnostics disk and ran them. My system showed NO errors which is very strange as I still cannot get SATA Channel 0 to work. I am still running from Channel 2 to the primary disk and I have bought an external caddy for the backup disk which is now connected via USB. Not ideal, but a workable solution until I can figure out what's wrong. BTW I have checked the SATA cables, they're fine...

 

Greetings, iannsue.

To clarify: that model is listed by Dell as an XP/Vista machine - did you upgrade to Win 7?

 

Yes, I upgraded via a clean install from XP Professional to W7 Home Premium. It has been running with W7 for about 6 months