Computer does not recognize additional hard drives

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jrydun

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Jul 22, 2013
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Through searching I have seen other people have had similar issues, but I have not seen a resolution that has fixed this issue for me.

My main HDD is recognized and boots with no issues. I have tried using 3 different hard drives, and not one has been recognized in BIOS, or when I go to Start --> Right Click My Computer --> Manage --> Storage --> Disk Management

At first I assumed the first HDD was just faulty, but for 3 different drives to not be recognized? What am I missing?
 
Solution
festerovic
If they are not showing up in BIOS, then:

The SATA ports are not active (some mobos have default SATA ports from the south bridge, and some need a onboard controller to use the remaining SATA slots on the board. The "extra" controller might need to be enabled.)
The SATA cables are bad.
The power going to the drives is no good.
The drives or their connectors are bad.

If you use Esata, sometimes it shuts off SATA ports on the mobo (like they are shared)
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festerovic

festerovic

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Jul 16, 2008
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If they are not showing up in BIOS, then:

The SATA ports are not active (some mobos have default SATA ports from the south bridge, and some need a onboard controller to use the remaining SATA slots on the board. The "extra" controller might need to be enabled.)
The SATA cables are bad.
The power going to the drives is no good.
The drives or their connectors are bad.

If you use Esata, sometimes it shuts off SATA ports on the mobo (like they are shared)
 
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Solution
smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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Are these Sata or IDE drivers?? If there IDE check the jumper on the drive. With both type check that the drives are spinning. On newer mb be carefull that your using the intel or amd Sata port and not third party acmedia port. On most bios the extra Sata controller is turned off. In the bios make sure the Sata chipset set to achi mode not raid or IDE. On older motherboards if your hard drive was over a set size it won't show up. That why new mb have efi bios now.
 
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J

jrydun

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Jul 22, 2013
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I've tried different cables, hooking the HDD's to a different computer, so I'm leaning towards the SATA ports being inactive. Now just to find out how to correct that.
 
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J

jrydun

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Jul 22, 2013
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They are all SATA drives. The only thing it recognizes is my main HDD, and my DVD-Rom
 
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festerovic

festerovic

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Jul 16, 2008
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Have you tried the optical in sockets 2-3 or 4?

What file system is on the drives you are trying? (which shouldnt matter but..)

One noobish thing to check is the power orientation on the SATA power going to the HDDs. Just for the sake of completely looking at possible causes, not that you are noobish.

Check the disks for AUTO detection, which you can get to by pressing Enter when at the main BIOS screen that says:

hard1ch23c2.gif


then on this screen, make sure it says AUTO:

hard1ch23c3.gif




 
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J

jrydun

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Jul 22, 2013
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I'm not sure what's on them, old Windows installations as far as I know. The only reason I discovered this issue today is that I was looking to add a 2nd HDD to install Ubuntu on rather than partition my 1 TB HDD. I will load into BIOS and see if everything is set to auto(I believe it is). I also updated my BIOS to see if it would correct it, and know it is at least recognizing the HDD on 1 and the optical on 6, but on the flipside, now I'm getting a CMOD Checksum Bad message on boot, lol, can't win :D
 
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