Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 Not Recognizing Two Internal SATA HDD's (WD)

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Riggan

Riggan

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Dec 9, 2015
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Hi,

I just recently upgraded my Mobo and CPU to an Aorus Gaming 7 and Intel i7-8700K. Currently running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 and plan on upgrading to Win10 when I get some business details in order. All seems well with my current setup except for one thing; I have two WD internal HDD's connected to the on-board SATA ports on the board, and neither are showing up in BIOS or Windows. Bios reads "not installed" for each SATA port the drives are connected to. These drives work fine when connected by same data cables to my previous board which is now being used in another room. That board is an ASUS Sabertooth z77.

The Aorus also has an SSD and optical disc drive connected to the same SATA "block" and are both working fine. I've checked BIOS and the SATA ports that house the HDD's are both enabled.

I've sorted out all driver conflicts I initially had in Win7 when I first installed the new board. I've also verified both HDD's are powered on and spinning. Motherboard just doesn't see them.

In the past when I've encountered issues like these I simply go into BIOS and enable the SATA ports/drives and all is well. With this, I'm not seeing anything else that needs tuning. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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Different manufacturers have different QA/QC standards. It may be as simple as plastic molding around the SATA connector. In other words you may need to trim the plastic for the cable connector to fully engage the socket on the motherboard (or eternal drive). Try a different SATA power or data cable. You can also try different Sata Ports. The ports themselves may be on different drivers.

I had a perfect example last fall. My HDTV died. When I transferred the Cat 6 ethernet cable from the old TV to the new one, it wouldn't connect to the router. The plastic cover was interfering with socket on the TV. I tried modifying the cable. It would connect while I pressed it in, but would fail when I let go of it. Luckily I had a spare cable (another brand which worked).
 
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Riggan

Riggan

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Hi,

Thx for the suggestion. I went ahead and tried four different SATA cables between the two and tried different ports as well. No change, but then, something really weird happened......

After messing with the connections to no avail, I put them back the way I originally had them and I bluescreened. Rebooted and one of the drives popped up! The other is still running but not recognized. I have no idea what happened. I tried moving the connections for the other one around and back again and rebooted, lightning didn't strike twice unfortunately. But, I do have one mysteriously being read now.

Also, as troubleshooting step to verify the other SATA ports I tried are functional, I moved the optical drive around the entire block and it was recognized every time.

Could it be something with the WD drives themselves and the way the newer motherboard is reading them? I've had them for a few years, but neither is no more than 5 years old.

Model numbers are;

WD1002FAEX
WD2002FAEX
 
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Riggan

Riggan

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I downloaded the WD tool and it sees the one drive that finally got recognized, but not the other.

After reading the tips at the link you sent, a question arises. I am hearing the drive spinning up, but could it be under-powered? I am using a CORSAIR Professional Series HX850 power supply for the motherboard. I have one GTX 970 graphics card connected to the PCIe-16 slot. Everything seems fine and running well. Weird that two internal HDD's would be the only thing having issues if the power supply wasn't quite up to par though.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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I doubt that it is under powered. The drives draw very little power. I can only guess that there is something defective in the drives or maybe the configuration is incompatible with the new system. For example, Fat 32 vs NFTS or GTP vs MBR.

Here are a few guides on drives.
http://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive/
http://www.howtogeek.com/school/using-windows-admin-tools-like-a-pro/lesson4/
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Try reading the drive on another system.

Did you reinstall Windows with the new motherboard? If not you are still using the drivers from the previous build.

Are you logged in as the same user as when these drives were used last. If not that may explain why you cant't see them.
 
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Riggan

Riggan

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The drive is recognized instantly when connected to the old Asus z77 motherboard, and booted from the same SSD that I originally used for the old board, and am still using for the new board. Logged in as same user.
 
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Riggan

Riggan

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I have installed Windows 10 Pro on an M.2 SSD and loaded all drivers. The problem is the exact same. System sees the one WD drive, but not the other. I take that same drive to my old Asus z77 and it's recognized instantly. It's so bizarre.
 
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Riggan

Riggan

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Um....because it's not defective? It works fine, just as it's always worked in the other system. Just not this one. To further prove its validity, I connected it to an old Pentium 4 running XP, and guess what? Seen right away and all files fully accessible. The drive did not suddenly become defective the moment it got connected to a new motherboard. Keeping in mind the other drive in the equation behaved the exact same way at first. After it finally got recognized it has been working great.
 
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Riggan

Riggan

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I'm signed in as before on Windows 7, as I said. It's the same SSD/Win7 that was connected to the motherboard that saw the drive for three years with no issue, and still sees it when I move both it and the SSD back over to test. The drive was never connected to a Win10 OS till now, so there was never a previous Win10 user associated with it.

Already updated the BIOS and nothing changed. It still reads which ever port the drive is connected to as "not installed".

Anyways, after several days of headscratching I'm tired of messing with it. I connected the drive to my trusty IDE/SATA-to-USB adapter and pulled the files I absolutely have to have off of it and plan to add another M.2 SSD to make up for the lost storage space. I'll chalk this up by concluding this particular drive and new board just don't enjoy speaking to one another through SATA and move on.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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If you have space on a drive, do a clone of the drive in question on another system. Then reformat it on that system. Then try formatting it on your system above. Then partition it . If it is an incompatibility, that should get rid of it. At that point it should be just another hard drive. Once that is done you can transfer you cloned data back to it.

That is you are still interested.
 
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