Win 8 OS doesn't recognize SATA HDD

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Steven Battisti

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Jul 4, 2013
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Hey folks, I am running Win 8.1 on a SDD I just threw together. I recently added in an old HDD that has most of my data on it. When I boot Windows, the BIOS sees the HDD fine, but it does not appear in Windows Explorer.

I CAN see the disk in Disk Management, and it looks fine there. I found some other threads on here that suggested I use Disk Management to "Import," but I don't appear to have that option. I also saw some threads that suggested I choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths," but I don't have that option either.

In DM, the disk appears as "online", and all of the partitions are "healthy". If I right-click, my only action available is "Offline" or "Convert to Dynamic Disk".

Thoughts?

Thanks!
 
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S
Thanks everyone for your help. I was eventually able to get this working, and although it wasn't directly related to any of your solutions, I greatly appreciate your advice!

The problem turned out to be rather more simple: when I said that I didn't have the option to map a drive in Disk Management, it turns out I was clicking on the DRIVE and not the PARTITION. Once I right-clicked on a specific partition, I was able to assign a drive, and then was able to see the drive in Windows. (Windows now recognizes all of my drives upon reboot.) Oddly, it behaved the same when I plugged in an external hard drive. So, I guess it may just be something I have to live with, but at least I am up and running!

Thanks again!
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hey there, Steven!

I'd suggest to test the drive using your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool or running chkdsk in Command prompt to fix bad sectors and retrieve readable data.
You can find this diagnostics utility on their website most probably and it should be free.
As for Command Prompt (cmd), you should type this in the Windows 8 menu, then a black dialog box will open >
type: chkdsk x: /r (where x is the drive letter assigned to your HDD)
It might take some time, depending on the drive's capacity, so be patient.
Here's a tutorial with several options how to do that. I guess in your case only option 2 will be possible, since you don't see the drive in Windows Explorer: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

Keep me posted! Hope this helps you! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 
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Steven Battisti

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Jul 4, 2013
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Thanks very much for your reply. I will give this a try, although I have several other HDDs, all of which were working as of a few days ago, and all of which show the same behavior in the new machine, so I sm leaning away from a problem with the individual disk... :(

Stupid question: what is the difference between the different types of SATA, and do they use different cables/ports?
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

Glorious
Jul 30, 2014
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In this case, you might be dealing with a faulty SATA port, or maybe a faulty cable.
Change the cable to determine that one.

As for the types of SATA, the difference is in the speed transfer. The interface itself is basically the same.
SATA I is the first generation of its own, running at 1.5 Gb/s (150MB/s)
SATA II is second with 3.0 Gb/s (300MB/s)
SATA III is the latest version doubling the speed of SATA II with its 6.0 Gb/s (600MB/s)
They are backward compatible.

Here's a detailed explanation of one of the users from Tom's community:
[edited]
1. Device and mobo support SATA 2 - use of a SATA 3 cable will not get you the 6Gb/s due to physical limitations of device and mobo.
2. Device and mobo support SATA 3 - use of a SATA 2 cable will not get you the 6Gb/s due to physical limitation of the cable.
3. Device supports SATA 3, but mobo supports SATA 2 - using either SATA 2 or 3 cable will result in 3Gb/s.
4. Device supports SATA 2, but mobo supports SATA 3 - using either cable will result in 3Gb/s.
5. Device and mobo support SATA 3 - use of SATA 2 cable will result in 3Gb/s
6. Device and mobo support SATA 3 - using a SATA 3 cable will get you the 6Gb/s
[Source: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/300583-31-sata-sata-cable]

Let me know if you have more questions! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 
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yumri

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Sep 5, 2010
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5. Device and mobo support SATA 3 - use of SATA 2 cable will result in 3GB/s

From what i can tell a SATA cable is the same from generation to generation with the only differneces being some of a 90degree angle on one side but a SATA cable for gen 1 will run at gen 3 speeds if both the drive interface, the drive itself, the motherboard controller and the conector are all SATA 3 6Gb/s .
It is also 6Gb/s not 6GB/s as pushing 6GB/s is like in SAS and fibre channel not in SATA 1,2 and 3 while SATA M.2 barely gets up to 1GB/s but is around 1024 Gb/s at top speeds already if not beyond that now so the capialization matters when using acyonms for computer speeds.
 
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S

Steven Battisti

Honorable
Jul 4, 2013
54
0
10,640
Thanks everyone for your help. I was eventually able to get this working, and although it wasn't directly related to any of your solutions, I greatly appreciate your advice!

The problem turned out to be rather more simple: when I said that I didn't have the option to map a drive in Disk Management, it turns out I was clicking on the DRIVE and not the PARTITION. Once I right-clicked on a specific partition, I was able to assign a drive, and then was able to see the drive in Windows. (Windows now recognizes all of my drives upon reboot.) Oddly, it behaved the same when I plugged in an external hard drive. So, I guess it may just be something I have to live with, but at least I am up and running!

Thanks again!
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
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