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Motherboard has started to be unable to find hard drive

Tags:
  • SATA
  • Motherboards
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Motherboards
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October 5, 2014 10:45:03 AM

I've been using an ASUS P8Z77-V LK LGA motherboard for three years now. I have had two drives, a 1TB HDD and a 128GB SSD, for the same amount of time. The SSD has the OS and some essential programs on it, and the HDD has everything else. Recently, I tried to use a program on the HDD and it said that the drive could not be found. When I restarted the computer, both drives weren't showing up in bios. I switched the SATA ports for both drives and that worked for a bit, but again now it can't find the HDD. I tried switching the SATA cable and the SATA port for it, but still nothing. Any suggestions?

More about : motherboard started unable find hard drive

a b V Motherboard
October 5, 2014 10:48:17 AM

Have you tried them one at a time?
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October 5, 2014 2:26:32 PM

I just tried that. The bios will recognize one or the other, but not both at once. However, the OS will find both drives, but it'll only run programs from the SSD. If I try to run a program from the HDD, the program won't open or it will and then not respond.
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a b V Motherboard
October 5, 2014 9:46:53 PM

Can you tell me which ports you have the drives plugged into? Also can give me the model drives you have?

Do you have your SATA controller in AHCI or IDE?
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October 6, 2014 7:49:25 AM

techgeek said:
Can you tell me which ports you have the drives plugged into? Also can give me the model drives you have?

Do you have your SATA controller in AHCI or IDE?


The HDD is a Seagate ST310005N1A1AS-RK 1TB and the SSD is a Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB.
The SSD is in SATA3G_1 and the HDD is in SATA3G_2. The SATA controller is in AHCI.

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a b V Motherboard
October 7, 2014 12:13:45 AM

Ok, I downloaded you motherboard manual. I was thinking if you had a third-party controller and you had them plugged into that, it could be causing you problems. However you motherboard only has Intel controllers so it's not that.

First off, I would plug your SSD into SATA6G_1. Technically speaking having your HDD in SATA6G_2 will work, but a HDD won't benefit from using the 6G port so plug it into SATA3G_1.

This will give you the most benefit from your SSD. Hopefully it will sort out the issue your having, though I suspect it won't.

Let me know and I'll give you some other things to try.
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October 7, 2014 9:31:41 AM

techgeek said:
Ok, I downloaded you motherboard manual. I was thinking if you had a third-party controller and you had them plugged into that, it could be causing you problems. However you motherboard only has Intel controllers so it's not that.

First off, I would plug your SSD into SATA6G_1. Technically speaking having your HDD in SATA6G_2 will work, but a HDD won't benefit from using the 6G port so plug it into SATA3G_1.

This will give you the most benefit from your SSD. Hopefully it will sort out the issue your having, though I suspect it won't.

Let me know and I'll give you some other things to try.


Okay, I tried that, and it only seems to be picking up the HDD in the 3G port. The BIOS doesn't seem to be detecting anything in the 6G ports (both drives were in the 6G ports before all the problems were happening).

Also, would updating the BIOS help, or would it be a waste of time?

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a b V Motherboard
October 7, 2014 9:34:44 PM

It couldn't hurt to do a BIOS update, but my gut tells me that won't help. I say that because if it was working before and now all of a sudden it's not, something has gone sideways.

It could be one of the drives causing the problem. Do they consistently work on there own, or have you had any problems where you tried only one drive and the motherboard failed to detect it.

The last option is motherboard. It's been a long time since I've heard of SATA ports outright failing, but it's happened. Something in the chipset could have been damaged.

Do you have another computer you can try both drives in? If so see if that computer will detect both drives whilst plugged in at the same time. This could help narrow down the problem.
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October 9, 2014 1:15:15 PM

Unfortunately, I don't have another computer that I could put the drives in, just my laptop.

As I was plugging and unplugging them to see how they worked on their own, I eventually found that while the HDD was in SATA3G_2 and the SSD was in SATA3G_4, it only showed the HDD in the boot menu, but it showed the SSD as being plugged in. I set the SSD as boot priority and everything ran normally for a bit. Then, any program I ran from the HDD would stop responding or it wouldn't open at all.
I actually downloaded Seatool for Windows and ran a few tests on each drive. The SSD was fine and passed, but the HDD failed both a generic test and a fix, so right now I'm guessing it's a problem with the hard drive.
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a b V Motherboard
October 9, 2014 10:20:17 PM

As my last post mentioned, I thought it could be one of the drives causing the problem.

Since you don't have another computer to try it in, do you have another drive to try in this computer? If the drive is failing Seatools, something is wrong with it. Does it give you any sort of error code?
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October 12, 2014 8:45:08 AM

The only other drive I have is the SSD.
The error code that it gives is E495D6CC.
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a b V Motherboard
October 12, 2014 12:23:56 PM

Can you download a program called Crystal Disk Info and see what it says about SMART? Unfortunately there is no way to decipher Seatools idiotic code. Just that the drive failed. I'm sure they can, but they don't mere mortals have that information.
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