Hard Drive not getting recognized, Sata Cable? Or Dead hard drive.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
atrix396

atrix396

Reputable
Nov 1, 2014
61
0
4,640
Hey, Toms Hardware community! First of all thanks for you time as this is my first build, which I've spent way too much on I want everything to work as you can understand. I have a Western Digital 2 Terabyte black edition which is connected via a right-angle SATA connector into SATA two on a Msi gaming 5 z97 edition. I realize the SATA connector has a lock and it locks onto my SSD fine, and SATA 1 and 2 ports, however, it does not lock onto my hard drive. This leads me to believe that either my SATA cable is broken, or my hard drives pins are broken, or it just doesn't lock. If you could help me figure out what part is wrong, please respond ASAP. So I can call in an RMA as fast as possible or purchase a new SATA cable. Thanks for your time.

-Andrew
 
Solution
A
It's conceivable the SATA cable is defective. Maybe yes - maybe no. Frankly in my experience a defective SATA cable is a rare event so I'm always suspicious about that being the cause of any connection problem. But it does happen - and particularly so with those cables that are equipped with a "locking mechanism" on the cable's connector. Anyways, why don't you simply purchase another SATA cable in the meantime? They're cheap enough - not more than $2 or $3 - and you can always use it as a spare if it comes to that.

Did you try reversing the SATA cables so that the one connected to your SSD is connected to the HDD? That didn't work?
Sort by date Sort by votes
A

ArtPog

Admirable
Sep 17, 2014
2,951
3
8,965
It's conceivable the SATA cable is defective. Maybe yes - maybe no. Frankly in my experience a defective SATA cable is a rare event so I'm always suspicious about that being the cause of any connection problem. But it does happen - and particularly so with those cables that are equipped with a "locking mechanism" on the cable's connector. Anyways, why don't you simply purchase another SATA cable in the meantime? They're cheap enough - not more than $2 or $3 - and you can always use it as a spare if it comes to that.

Did you try reversing the SATA cables so that the one connected to your SSD is connected to the HDD? That didn't work?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
atrix396

atrix396

Reputable
Nov 1, 2014
61
0
4,640


Well I derped, I was unaware that when plugging in two drives you had to enable the second one?? But ya I enabled it and it works fine except for the fact that im only getting 1.6 tb of the 2tb i bought oh well. Thanks for your time though.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
CountMike

CountMike

Titan
Oct 31, 2015
33,852
3,177
147,990
It's always lower than marked because in windows and some other OSes 1 KB is actually 1024 bytes, ad to that loss after formatting and hidden partitions when OS is installed. Disk manufacturers consider 1KB to be 1000 bytes and don't take into account partitioning and format.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
atrix396

atrix396

Reputable
Nov 1, 2014
61
0
4,640

Oh ok! Thanks! I was completely unaware of that.
 
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