NFORCE3-A939
AMD 3000+ Venice
512mb Kingston ddr400 RAM
NVidia GeForce 128mb AGP 8x
Hitachi Deskstar Sata 80GB (ebuyer quickfind code 87673)
Windows XP Home Edition (SP2)

I recently bought an NFORCE3-A939 motherboard and a Hitachi Deskstar 80gb SATA drive as part of a PC I'm building. The problem I have is that the Hard Disk won't even power up and so it can't even be detected by the bios.
The sata functionality is enabled in the bios, which i have flashed to the latest version in the hope this would solve the problem (which it didn't). The drive seems lifeless and won't even spin up. I have tried it with Raid enabled and disabled. The system did, however, power up my old IDE hard disk and booted windows which ran fine. However with the IDE drive connected or disconnected, my sata disk still wouldn't work.

Fearing I had been sold a dud hard disk, I then tried it in my brother's DELL PC and also in a computer i built for my mum (very similar to my system but with an ASUS motherboard) and I was surprised to find that the disk works just fine in their systems. I also put my brother's maxtor sata HD in the machine I'm building and that worked fine; so I know the sata functionality on my motherboard is working.

Are there maybe any known issues between Hitachi Deskstar sata HDDs and the nforce3 motherboard? Any help would be sooooo appreciated.

tbh could be you just got a faulty drive i would send back and ask for replacement if they say it fine then you know that it is a mother board problem having faulty sata connectors could be the problem too it might be getting power but unless it is told to do some thing it wont do any thing hope that helps

Im sure the drive works as Ive tried it in a couple of other systems with no problems.

Anyway I took my step brothers SATA Maxtor drive and tried it in my system and it worked, so my motherboard's SATA connectors must be fine. Cheers for your help though mate. Perhaps its just a hardware compatiblilty issue...