Can't update hard drive firmware - "invisible" drives

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Bob DeFranco

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Jan 10, 2013
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After updating my system from an eight-year-old motherboard and processor to a new mobo and cpu, the two oldest drives from my old system are no longer seen by either Device Manager or Disk Management. The drives, both about 7 years old, are a Samsung HD 753LJ and a Maxtor STM 3500630AS. They are both SATA drives and are attached to two of the six SATA ports on the new mobo. I suspect that they need firmware updates to enable them to work on the new mobo, a Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7, which also does not see them in the BIOS. However, I no longer have the old system, so I don't know how to update them if I can't mount them. I'm not an expert in this, so any help would be welcomed.
 
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M
Hi


Some motherboards have SATA controller which is part of the Intel or AMD motherboard chipset and a additional SATA controller
If the additional controller is disabled in the BIOS or UEFI the effect is the drives do not work

Some Dell & other motherboards let you disable individual SATA ports so no time is wasted scanning for non existant drives at power on

The other possibility if the old drives are SATA I & the ports they are connected to are SATA III there may be a BIOS setting to ensure they are detected correctly.

Or you have not re connected the SATA power plugs from the PSU

It is unlikely two drives died at the same time

regards
Mike Barnes
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Rogue Leader

Rogue Leader

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Dec 22, 2014
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+1 I have never heard of needing to do this on even the oldest of drives. Are you sure they are powering up properly?

Next step IMO would be to use a USB hard drive enclosure if you can't get them to start up.
 
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Bob DeFranco

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Jan 10, 2013
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I found firmware online, though not on either manufacturer's website. I don't know if it's newer, though, since I don't know what version I currently have. Could it be related to AHCI, which is the only choice offered, other than RAID?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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If it's not from the manufacturer, don't.
I've never ever needed to upgrade the firmware on a drive.
And I have a stack of drives way older than that...ranging down to 6GB.

USB enclosure or dock would almost certainly work.
Also, see this thread from 2008:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/246605-32-samsung-753lj-recogzined-kt600
 
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mbarnes86

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Sep 16, 2010
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Hi


Some motherboards have SATA controller which is part of the Intel or AMD motherboard chipset and a additional SATA controller
If the additional controller is disabled in the BIOS or UEFI the effect is the drives do not work

Some Dell & other motherboards let you disable individual SATA ports so no time is wasted scanning for non existant drives at power on

The other possibility if the old drives are SATA I & the ports they are connected to are SATA III there may be a BIOS setting to ensure they are detected correctly.

Or you have not re connected the SATA power plugs from the PSU

It is unlikely two drives died at the same time

regards
Mike Barnes
 
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Solution
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Bob DeFranco

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Jan 10, 2013
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10,530


By George, you've got it! There are some SATA ports on this board that are controlled by an ASM1061 chip (ports 6 and 7). These ports NEVER show up in the BIOS, nor can I find a way to activate them. I moved the two drives to ports 2 and 4, which are controlled by the Z170 chipset. The drive plugged into port 4 then appeared (YAY!), but the one plugged into port 2 did not. I have an SSD mounted on the board; it shows up as attached to port 0, although the SATA port identified on the board as port 0 has nothing plugged into it. My boot drive is in port 5, my CD/DVD drive is in port 3, and ports 1 and 2 show as empty. The other hard drive, still missing, does not appear if plugged into ports 1 or 2. If I could activate the ports controlled by the ASM chip, maybe I could mount it in one of those. The ASM1061 shows up in Device Manager as a Storage Controller but not as an IDE/ATA/ATAPI Controller.
 
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