SATA hide&seek problem on boot

[glObalist]

Hi,

I have my OS Maxtor SATAII hard drive connected on this shiny new Epox mobo, 9NPA+ Ultra. The problem is, sometimes (I think it's after a F10/save out of the BIOS) it doesn't get detected at POST and therefore the OS will not start up. However if I don't change anything in the BIOS I can restart the comp repeatedly and the SATA drive is always there.

The only solution right now for me is turning the computer off, and then upon the next POST the drive is there again. The only drawback to this method is that during the unsuccessful post my other (IDE) drive apparently gets selected as the first (and at the time the only one) drive to boot off (I'm talking about the harddrive boot priority option) and I have to go back to BIOS to put the SATAII HD as #1 again.

Hope this makes sense and I appreciate any kind of help on this issue.

P.S. I have tried 3 different SATA cables and also different SATA slots on the mobo to no avail.

[Dazz]

Update your motherboards BIOS i would say.

[Dr.Nick]

There are a few known issues with Maxtor HD's and NF4's. If you call Maxtor, dont email, they should have new drive firmware to fix it.

[glObalist]

It just occured to me, this does not have anything to do with jumpering the harddrives, does it? Both drives are set to master AFAIR but they're on different channels... Otherwise there'd be conflictc everytime I boot, not just after a CMOS save, right?