Win8 not detecting WD Black hard drive. Help!

[ahthurungnone]

So I did a complete new install of Win8 Pro with hardware that all works. However, when I go to Computer my secondary drive (where I store all my photos, music, etc.) is not displayed. If I open my main drive under properties, I can see the secondary drive under some of those options. The secondary drive shows up on the BIOS. It showed up when I installed Win8, but it cannot be found now.

HELP!!!

 

[The_Prophecy]

Is the secondary drive on a third party storage controller in your system? Sounds like you're simply missing a driver for it.

 

[ahthurungnone]

No, its connected straight to the mobo. However, it is in NTFS format. Would that be causing it?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Many motherboards have third party controllers built on to give them additional SATA ports. What board model do you have?

The file system on the drive is meaningless, unless it was previously used in an Apple machine and formatted HFS or HFS+, or in a Linux box and formatted ext3 or ext4.

 

[ahthurungnone]

I will install the Win7 chipset drivers and see what happens.

 

[The_Prophecy]

That may not help, as the chipset drivers are likely from Intel (assuming you have an Intel chipset based motherboard, which won't help if the drive is indeed connected to an integrated third party controller). Post the manufacturer and model of your board so we can locate the correct drivers.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Mobo: 890FXA-GD70
HD: Western Digital Black 1.0TB

 

[The_Prophecy]

The included JMicron controller (according to the MSI website for your board) may service both the IDE ports, as well as some SATA ports. Make sure you install that driver as well:

http://ca.msi.com/service/download/driver-6978.html

 

[ahthurungnone]

Thank you. I'll give that a shot as soon as I get back home.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Reinstalled Win7 with no drivers and it finds the HDD. Is this some sort of Win8 glitch?

 

[ahthurungnone]

Best answer selected by ahthurungnone.