pci sata card- win7/64 won't boot with drives attached, does after bootup

[Unique]

i have a bit of a monster pc build to which i constantly add to it. after the most recent upgrade i found a strange issue with a PCI 4 port SATA card (it's a silicon image chipset). if i attach drives in the standard way, win7 64 bit won't boot and freezes. but if i disconnect all drives and boot into windows, then plug in the sata cables one at a time, windows recognises the drives and everything works perfectly fine

if i connect the drives whilst booting, they show up as connected to the card during the boot process just before windows starts booting. the drives are 2x 1.5tb and 1x 1tb, so no 2tb+ size problems

i also have drives connected by the internal sata ports, and others to another pci-e 2 port card, and another pci 4 port card, and the pc boots with drives connected to all of these, but just not this card, which is a slightly different silicon image chipset to the other PCI card

i'm not using raid

does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be wrong? i don't think it can be the power usage as i had 2 of the 3 drives working previously on a PCI-e card that i removed to use in another pc. i was going to buy another PCI-e card to replace the one i moved, which will take care of 2 drives but leave me one short, but as i already have a card i shouldn't really need to buy another one unless really necessary

so why would windows not boot with drives attached, but work if you plug them in after boot?

[c12038]

?Hardware conflict with another card i would say

[blueball]

Is it trying to spin up all discks at same time and not getting enough power? Some cards do staggered spin up.

[Unique]

thanks for the replies. i've now managed to get all my drives to boot as i bought another of the exact same pci-e sata card that i removed from the pc to stick in my other one, and i stuck 2 of the drives into that, and then one drive into the "problematic" sata card, moving to another port just to try something slightly different and it booted first time

it would still be good to figure out what the problem is though, as i have 3 remaining slots on that card, and one on another card. realistically i'd use one or two as esata, but my plan is to get a bluray burner soon, and that would use another sata port (but i can swap with one on the mobo (that has 4 ports - which i presume is better than using a card sata port) or a pci-e card port, so that would use another, and i could probably easily squeeze a couple of 2.5" drives into the case or if i got really adventurous i could maybe fit one or to more 3.5" drives if i got creative and hung them down the side or stuck them to the inside part of the case somehow

the cards i have are as follows... all are silicon image chipsets

sil 3114 (2 port) softraid 5 controller - PCI bus 5, device 2, function 0
sil 3124 (2 port) softraid 5 controller - PCI bus 5, device 0, function 0
sil 3132 satalink controller - PCI bus 2, device 0, function 0
sil 3132 satalink controller - PCI bus 4, device 0, function 0

i presume the onboard sata ports (4 of them) are PCI bus 0, device 31, function 2 - Intel(R) 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller - 27C0

this is the details with everything running, all windows updates up to date, no warnings in the device manager, i usually keep everything nice and clean and up to date software etc wise, no viruses etc

in my power management windows settings i have it set to turn off discs if not in use within 20 mins, i'm normally just using one or two drives at time, along with the SSD bootdrive. mainly just one HDD plus boot, only 2 drives if i'm copying/moving between discs, i wouldn't have more than two drives running after bootup unless i was searching across drives for something, which isn't often

it's a 450w corsair PSU, the HDD's are a mix of green "eco" drives and 7200rpm non eco ones

any help at all is appreciated. is there a bootlog type thing i can look at that might help shed light? where do i find it if so, and how do i make sense of it?

[big_hairy_rob]

Whats your whole system? (including all hard drives). I'm still a bit concerned that it's a power issue, especially with your system trying to spin up everything at once.

What port was your hard drive plgged into on the other SATA card? I presume that your boot drive was plugged into Port 0?

[Unique]

whole system, from memory, to much to say, but i think it's HD4580 or something radeon (not high powered)

the thing is, by swapping from the drives connected to the PCI sata card to having 2 in a PCI-e card and 1 in a PCI card it boots and everything works fine, so doesn't sound like a power issue

interestingly i noticed that the sata card in question no longer shows during the boot process. i noticed this before that something it wasn't showing, but the drive it connects to works, and it shows in windows device manager

the SSD boot drive is connected directly to the motherboards onboard ports, i always connect boot drives directly, also optical connected directly (although in this case it's an IDE/PATA drive connected to mobo), and then usually the higher capacity drives to mobo and lower to sata cards, in this case the lower/older ones to the PCI card and newer to the PCI-e cards