Setting up a second hard drive in BIOS

Bourne2Play

Honorable
Jul 25, 2012
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10,510
I have a computer with a 128 gb SSD on it, and I just went and added a 1 tb HDD to it. From what I read you're suppose to access the BIOS and set it up there.

When my pc first load, I get the message Press cntrol and M to enter bios setup, so I did that. It takes me to a Marvell BIOS Setup screen. This is not the same BIOS screen I saw in previous PCs I've had. This one has very limited options, and I don't see any options on there to set up a new hard drive.

What am I doing wrong? I have an MSI p67a-gd65 motherboard. Here are some screen shots.

http://i336.photobucket.com/albums/n356/malshafi_2008/comp/photo4.jpg
http://i336.photobucket.com/albums/n356/malshafi_2008/comp/photo5.jpg
 
Your motherboard has 4 SATA 3 (6Gb/s) ports.
For best performance your SSD should be connected to one of the 2 Intel 6Gb/s ports (SATA1 or SATA2), not one of the 2 Marvell ports (SATA7 or SATA8).
See page 2-13 of your motherboard manual for the location of the ports.

You can either connect your HDD to the remaining Intel 6Gb/s port or to any of the Intel 3Gb/s ports (SATA3 thru SATA6).

Pressing Ctrl-M takes you into Marvell’s RAID BIOS, which is different from your motherboard’s main BIOS setup.
You would enter RAID BIOS if you want to create a RAID array with 2 or more identical drives, which is something you’re not doing in your current steup.

Press the Delete key to enter your motherboard’s BIOS.

SATA ports can have 3 settings (modes): IDE, AHCI, & RAID.
SSDs need to be in AHCI mode for best performance so change your SATA ports to AHCI mode (page 3-16 of your motherboard manual).