windows 8 2nd disk found in bios but not in windows disk management utility

spn0923

Reputable
Apr 25, 2014
2
0
4,510
windows 8 2nd hard drive not found in windows disk management utility but is correctly identified and found if i F2 boot into the asrock motherboard bios management utility. I am swapping my 2nd data disk from my old xp pc along with its sata data cable so i know disk and cable are working and disk is formatted. I am thinking there is a setting wrong or conflict somewhere like in the old days of com port conflicts. please help
 
Solution
If your BIOS recognizes the HDD unit properly, it REALLY should show up in Disk Management. However, you must look in the right place.

Disk Management has two panes on the right, and each of them SCROLLS so you can see all they contain. Now focus on the LOWER RIGHT pane which shows all the hardware storage devices that BIOS has, even those that Windows does not yet understand. It really should be there as one rectangle representing the unit, and within it one or more rectangles representing the Partition(s) on it. Now, look at the first of the Partitions with the info inside that box. The first line should have a disk name given when it was first set up (like "MyDisk", or just about anything) followed by a letter name that Windows uses...

Paperdoc

Polypheme
Ambassador
If your BIOS recognizes the HDD unit properly, it REALLY should show up in Disk Management. However, you must look in the right place.

Disk Management has two panes on the right, and each of them SCROLLS so you can see all they contain. Now focus on the LOWER RIGHT pane which shows all the hardware storage devices that BIOS has, even those that Windows does not yet understand. It really should be there as one rectangle representing the unit, and within it one or more rectangles representing the Partition(s) on it. Now, look at the first of the Partitions with the info inside that box. The first line should have a disk name given when it was first set up (like "MyDisk", or just about anything) followed by a letter name that Windows uses for it like "(E:)" If it has NO such letter name, RIGHT-click on it and choose a letter from the mini-menu. If you do this, back out of Disk Management and reboot to allow Windows to update its Registry. Then check that it is showing in My Computer.

If that is not the problem, look again at the LOWER RIGHT pane of Disk Management and the info in the Partition box. The second line should have a Partition size in GB followed by a File System name like "NTFS". If the name there is "RAW", that means some of the info in the Partition Table or the Directory structure of this unit is wrong and Windows cannot figure it out. This becomes a Data Recovery task. Your data VERY likely is fine, but can't be read properly. If this is your situation check the web for ways to recover data from a RAW disk. In almost all such cases you will use software to read the info from the troubled HDD and then write it to a DIFFERENT drive. This is so that there is NO attempt to write anything to the troubled unit and cause further problems there. When all the data have been safely moved to the spare drive, THEN you can afford to wipe the original drive unit clean and copy the recovered data back to it. So, to do this, you will need the software AND (at least temporarily) a "spare" HDD with enough empty space to accept all the data recovered from the troubled drive.
 
Solution