BIOS Wont Recognize HDD and Optical Drive

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skarocksoi

Reputable
Jul 29, 2014
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4,520
A loose SATA cable ended up frying my HDD, and after which my computer no longer recognized my optical drive as well. I bought a new HDD and optical drive and installed them, but neither one is recognized still.

To troubleshoot I:
Checked BIOS - Drives do not show up in BIOS but my SSD drives do. SATA ports set to ACHI.
Checked Power Cables-Connected working power cables to drives. My HDD is connected to the same power cable as the SSD, so I imagine that cable is working fine.
Checked SATA Cables - Connected known working SATA cables to drive with no changes.
Checked SATA ports- Connected drive to working SATA port that SSD drive was connected to. HDD and optical drive still dont show up, but the SSD drives show up in any port they are plugged in to.
Updated all drivers and BIOS to latest versions.
Voltages from power supply show up as normal in BIOS.

I have no idea what the issue is. It seems to me that everything should be working, seeing as how the SSD drives work perfectly fine. And I find it hard to believe both the new HDD and optical drive came DOA.

Motherboard is MSI Z87-G45, drive is Western Digital, Optical drive is LG, SSDs are both Samsung. I have an MSI graphics card and 2 Gskill 8GB ram installed.
 
Solution
S
So after some more troubleshooting and testing, I figured out the answer to my problem.

I had recently changed my PSU and the 12V and 5V pins on the SATA outputs were switched between two different PSUs. I had left the old SATA power cables in, so any device looking for 5V was getting 12V, which apparently fried them. I switched out my cables to the one that came with the PSU and I had my HDD replaced from Amazon and used an old Optical drive and everything worked as its supposed to.

So lesson learned; leaving old cables connected wont save you any time.
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Sounds like the HDD and ODD have been damaged - have you got a HDD dock to see if the HDD is working?

I've had brand new HDDs die within a few hours of testing them, so I would test it with a dock or caddy to verify if it's working. I would rather lose an ODD than a HDD as if you have important files on the HDD, you might have to contact a data recovery company, and that is not cheap!
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
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35,960
Hi there skarocksoi,

Sorry that you are facing some issues with your WD drive. :(

As far as I understand, you've tried your HDD with your SSD's cable (on the same SATA port) and it is not recognized even by BIOS.
Can you feel it powering up at all?

Do you have just a single power cable with multiple connectors? It could be the case that it does not provide enough power.

Yeah, it would be nice to attach those to another machine, so you can be absolutely sure if the drives are working properly.

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD :)
 
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skarocksoi

Reputable
Jul 29, 2014
7
0
4,520


The HDD is using a power cable with multiple connectors, all of which are connected (2 SSDs and the 1 HDD). The optical drive has its own power cable. But the SSD's work perfectly fine regardless of what is plugged in. I tried a new power cable and that didnt work.

Unfortunately I dont have another computer to test the hard drive on at the moment. The only other thing I can think of is that the HDD and Optical drive came in the same package from Amazon, so maybe they both had some sort of incident that made them faulty? But both arrived in box that looked fine and neither one showed any signs of damage.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
S

skarocksoi

Reputable
Jul 29, 2014
7
0
4,520
So after some more troubleshooting and testing, I figured out the answer to my problem.

I had recently changed my PSU and the 12V and 5V pins on the SATA outputs were switched between two different PSUs. I had left the old SATA power cables in, so any device looking for 5V was getting 12V, which apparently fried them. I switched out my cables to the one that came with the PSU and I had my HDD replaced from Amazon and used an old Optical drive and everything worked as its supposed to.

So lesson learned; leaving old cables connected wont save you any time.
 
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