Hello,

I just bought a WD Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS SATA300 drive and wanted to use it together with a Maxtor 6Maxtor 6B300S0 SATA150 disk.. however, when I connect both and start up I get the "hardware initiate failure" until I boot up with the Maxtor alone.. the same message occurs if I start with the WD disk only. I've got a A8V-Deluxe motherboard and I'm aware that the WD only will work as a 150 like the Maxtor.

Anyone got any ideas what could cause this?

Thanks in advance!

Other speccs:

AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz, 3500+
1024 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
RADEON X800 Series (256 MB)

set the hard disk to Sata150 probly the motherboard does not supported the Sata 300mode (via jumpers on the hdd goto web site and get the info on how to do it)

The reason your hard drive is not working is because your motherboard is not listed on compatible controllers. Here is the WD weblink that prove that. There are no jumpers that you can change the interface type on your drive.
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/library/sata/2579-701239.pdf

What you can do is to buy another pci controller and put it on your motherboard. Try the Promise controller which is compatible if you like.
Here is the link.
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?product_id=136

I tried what leexgx suggested and set the jumpers as explained in http://www.wdc.com/en/library/eide/2579-001037.pdf and it works.

Nice info regarding the promise controller, Techfan. I think I'll invest in one to make sure that I make best use of the drive.

Thanks to both of you

i think all hard disks have 150 mode support

Correct. It is a standard among SATA 3.0