New hard drive detection problem

Mellow Matt

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I currently have one SATA hard drive installed and one IDE DVD drive on my Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L motherboard, running Windows 7 64bit. I've just bought another SATA hard drive (intending to use it in addition to the one I have), but the BIOS is not detecting it. The new hard drive is a Samsung 2TB HD204UI SATA 3.

I have tried using all 4 SATA ports on the motherboard but it still doesn't recognise the hard drive. I have tested the cables and they are fine, the hard drive is also fine.

Does anyone know how I can make the BIOS recognise the new hard drive?! Or is it not possible for compatibility reasons or something?

Thanks!
 
I have to ask this: if you right click the "My Computer" icon and go in the device manager you can't see it in there?

If you can, right click again, go to manage/disk management, select the new drive and right click on it then quick format NTFS. Make sure you don't format your old HDD but the new one, you have the HDD details in the window below. Then restart.
 

Mellow Matt

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Thanks for the reply, but it's not appearing in device manager either :(

I've just tried hooking up my new HD using the same SATA port and cables as the old one was using (so I've disconnected the old one completely) and booted up off a windows disc to see if Windows would install to the new HD, but the install doesn't see the HD either.

I don't know if it's something to do with the BIOS settings, but I can't see how it would be if my old SATA drive is working fine.

Any ideas?
 

Mellow Matt

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No luck so far. However, I just had a thought - do you need a SATA 3 cable to go with a SATA 3 HD? I believe the cable I'm using is a SATA 2 cable (if there is such a thing?) - could that be why, or is would any SATA cable work with any SATA HD?

Thanks.
 

Mellow Matt

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I think perhaps I've got confused about SATA 2/3. My motherboard says it supports SATA 3gb/s, which I took to mean SATA 3, but now I think I've discovered that SATA 3 means 6gb/s - would this indicate that my motherboard doesn't support SATA 3 hard drives?
 

Mellow Matt

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The HDD has the pins for a jumper, but there isn't a jumper on them.

I'm not sure if the thread that you've linked to is applicable to me - as my motherboard says it supports 3gb/s, so I'm not sure if I'd need to change the jumpers.
 

Mellow Matt

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I'm still playing around with this trying to get it working. It seems that if both HDDs are plugged in they are both not detected if the new HDD is on SATA port 0 or 2 (channel 2), and the old HDD is on port 1 or 3 (channel 3). If the old HDD is on the earlier channel (channel 2) by putting it in port 0 or 2, and the new HDD is in port 1 or 3 then the old HDD is detected, but the new isn't.

Does this help in any way?! I don't really get why the old HDD being detected is reliant on which port they're both plugged into? Is it something to do with it timing out whilst trying to search channel 2 with the new one plugged into channel 2?

Also, the new HDD seems to be making a beeping noise, it goes beeeep for about 4 or 5 seconds, then a second gap, then beeep again, and keeps doing that for a minute, then stops. Is that indicative of anything?

Thanks

 
That drive is a standard 5400rpm SATA 2 drive, and your board supports SATA 2 drives. Sounds to me like you have a bad hard drive. For some reason I just noticed, they have stopped calling drives SATA I, SATA II and SATA III and instead are calling them by their transfer speed, which is 1.5G/ps, 3G/bs and 6G/bs respectively, which allows the manufacture to sell them using a bigger "sounding" number I guess. Is deceptive and confusing at best, but that is exactly what I see going on here.
Are you certain that drive is good? Have you tried it in another machine?