Legit Reviews

I pulled one of the SATA cables out of one of my drives. I loaded it up. When I did that, all hell broke loose.

One of my quad cores always goes to 100%, my mouse jerks around like a guy with Parkinson's, and I when I connect the extra drive it seems like it sees it, but the drive immediately goes away after it "installs" it.

When I tried go to disk management the computer hangs.

My Device Manager claims that there is an issue with the SM Bus and unknown device. I tried to uninstall them or disable them, but nothing happens they come right back.

I don't even know where to start.


Quad Q9450
IP35
4 Gigs of RAM
Onboard Sound
RAID 1 (this disk is fine)
an extra drive (which I can't get the computer to see.)
8800GTS
Vista Ultimate

You pulled the SATA plug as the computer was running?

Yes, because they are supposed to be hot swappable. Originally they weren't, but they have been hot swappable for at least a year and my board isn't that old.

Either way, it seems the issue I keep having is in the "unknown" device. That keeps loading after I boot. I can't figure out what it is though.

Do you think a vista repair disc would help?

How long have you been using your current install of Vista? Is there a possibility that some motherboard drivers may not have been installed? Either way, I'd suggest downloading the newest drivers for your motherboard, and also updating the bios.

Have your tried going into your BIOS?

Plug the drive into a different SATA port if one is available and see if the BIOS recognizes it. This will let you know if it is a hardware problem or a windows driver problem.

I really hope that the drive is not damaged because of the SATA cable removal

I've had customers try the hot swap routine it usually doesn't turn out well even on hot swap capable boards.

One fried a nice external enclosure (Tagan) that was e-sata/usb/docking but he was running it from a normal sata port and an e-sata bracket.

Another blew a sata port set, probably the sata controller chip.

Then one blew a drive but the board and ports were ok.

When it goes wrong it goes really wrong but seems to strike where ever it wants.

The first thing I would suggest is that you reset the BIOS to defaults. An elecrtical "shock" to the system can cause havoc to the BIOS as well. The BIOS may well have been scrambled. Do that before you reformat the drive. Your data may still be there.

Didn't they provide a utility or direct you to unmount the drive first? Hot swap does not mean you can randomly walk up and jerk cables out. You must have some documentation as to what to do to "hot" remove a drive.

Worst case you may have to reflash the BIOS. Might as well check for an update to it too.

tomcat2200 wrote: Didn't they provide a utility or direct you to unmount the drive first? Hot swap does not mean you can randomly walk up and jerk cables out. You must have some documentation as to what to do to "hot" remove a drive.

actually, yes it does. as long as its not the os drive

both the drive and the MB need to support hot swap, and be set to use it (disables write cache and a few other things).
It's never a good idea to remove a running drive.
I'd try the bios to disable that port, then re-enable it (load drivers if needed) Then re attach the drive "cold" and try to detect it from the BIOS. If it is seen via the bios try to find it via the O/S.
were you using any thrid party disk management software ?

ANY sata port on ANY mobo is ALWAYS hot swapable unless its the os disk, and as long as its not being written to when you remove. you kinda have to do the whole usb "safely remove hardware" deal

This may not be very helpful, but you might want to try putting the drive that you unplugged in an external enclosure, connecting the drive via USB if possible, and then reformatting the OS disk. To me, this sounds like a corrupt file system issue. Anything is worth a shot.

Good luck,
tekgek