Only able to connect two internal drives at once?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

tyrannical

Distinguished
Oct 25, 2011
39
0
18,540
So i have the gigabtye 990fxa-ud3
and right now i have my ssd and my regular 3.5 hard drive installed. I am unable to connect my dvd disk drive while the other two are also connected. Is this a limitation of my motherboard or of my limited knowledge? I have a bunch of sata 3 ports on the outside of my machine but honestly i have never used them and dont know what exactly they are for.
 
Solution
Tradesman1
I'd say you need SATA drives, when you talk a cable with a number of connectors, if it's a ribbon type cable then sounds like you're talking IDE drives.........your mobo itself has six SATA ports - somewhat behind where yout primary PCI-E slot is...if the drives are SATA, then you need data cables (1 ea) to go from the port to the drive and need to attach a power connector from the PSU to each drive
Sort by date Sort by votes
clutchc

clutchc

Titan
Ambassador
Apr 22, 2009
43,150
411
131,790
Actually, you only have 2 SATA ports on the back of the MB. And they are eSATA. You don't need or want to connect to them. That board should have no issue connecting more SATA devices to the rest of the on-board SATA ports. Enter BIOS and see if you need to "enable" the other ports. And check to see if you are using the SATA interface as IDE or AHCI. And if all the ports are set the same.

What exactly do you mean by being unable to connect your optical drive to the SATA ports? They plug in OK right? Just that you can't get the drive to work, or what?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
T

tyrannical

Distinguished
Oct 25, 2011
39
0
18,540


I do have a sata 3 port on my case but i guess whether or not my mobo supports it is an other matter altogether?
I guess the problem is that it physically wont reach. It should be clear i really dont know much but the cord going from my mobo seems to have many different outputs on it every couple of inches or so each one I guess would theoretically support its own drive but it just doesn't work out in my case. Recently i had the bright idea to lower my disk drive into a lower slot in my case allowing the end of the cord to reach. This only supplied power to the disk drive but it wont register ( and has in the past). I am sorry for explaining this so poorly

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Tom Tancredi

Tom Tancredi

Judicious
May 9, 2013
4,999
0
32,960
It sounds like you are trying to limp along a OLD / Cheapo system if the Mobo only has two SATA ports. I know there were some like that out there, but the norm was 4 ports all next to each other ON the motherboard. Can you confirm you only have 2 on the motherboard?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Tradesman1

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Jun 5, 2013
67,883
40
126,960
I'd say you need SATA drives, when you talk a cable with a number of connectors, if it's a ribbon type cable then sounds like you're talking IDE drives.........your mobo itself has six SATA ports - somewhat behind where yout primary PCI-E slot is...if the drives are SATA, then you need data cables (1 ea) to go from the port to the drive and need to attach a power connector from the PSU to each drive
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
T

tyrannical

Distinguished
Oct 25, 2011
39
0
18,540


I wouldnt classify my mobo as OLD or cheapo it is a 2011 model and i was reading in the manual just now that it supports up to 6 sata 6gb/s devices and two esata devices. So i guess its clear that i am simply doing it wrong lol. could it be that my case is too large for the cords to reach? I have an obnoxiously large nzxt
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom