Both Hard Drives Undetected (1 new) in BIOS and Winodws Install

[djfizzle]

I bought a new ASRock A770DE+ motherboard, hooked up my bootable usb drive to find out 1st off it didnt detect my old hard drive, and second i cant install windows on an external hard drive, it says windows can be installed on this drive. SO today i buy a hard drive to find out it doesnt detect that one either.

the new one is a 500 gb Hamachi 7200 rpm 15mb i think cache, may have been used didnt come in a box from Fry's. Trying to install Windows 7 BIOS detecting dvd drive via sata.

Does H.D.D. LED have anything to do with it? Does updating BIOS have anything to do with it, its currently ~2009, but the manual says nothing special is require to use such drives. I dont own a floppy disk drive.


PLEASE DONT OVER LOOK THIS IVE BEEN COMPUTERLESS FOR 3 WEEKS!

AMD Phenom II x4 955
4GB ram
9800GTX+ 512md ram

 

[jamie_1318]

check the cables and that it's plugged in correctly. second check the BIOS, ussually you have to press F2 or Delete key, it hopefully tell you what button it is. The HDD LED indicates SATA/IDE plug activity, but I wouldn't put too much weight on it. you can't install windows on an external drive by nature, windows forbids it.

 

[inzone]

You need to go into the bios and under the boot menue there are two listings for hdd's one is the boot order and the other is the list of storage devices . You want to make sure that the hdd is listed first in both places and then see if it is ddetected. You should also see the drive in the main menue where the 6 sata ports are listed , you will see the cd rom's listed and the hdd's listed at what sata ports they are plugged into.

 

[inzone]

You need to go into the bios and under the boot menue there are two listings for hdd's one is the boot order and the other is the list of storage devices . You want to make sure that the hdd is listed first in both places and then see if it is ddetected. You should also see the drive in the main menue where the 6 sata ports are listed , you will see the cd rom's listed and the hdd's listed at what sata ports they are plugged into.

 

[inzone]

You need to go into the bios and under the boot menue there are two listings for hdd's one is the boot order and the other is the list of storage devices . You want to make sure that the hdd is listed first in both places and then see if it is ddetected. You should also see the drive in the main menue where the 6 sata ports are listed , you will see the cd rom's listed and the hdd's listed at what sata ports they are plugged into.

 

[Paperdoc]

Check a few things in your BIOS Setup screens. Refer to the mobo manual - if you don't have it, download here:

http://www.asrock.com/MB/manual.asp?Model=A770DE%2b

See manual p. 50, BIOS Setup screen Advanced. Make sure the Onboard SATA Controller is Enabled. On the next line, SATA Operation Mode, select the AHCI option for SATA hard drive use. Win 7 knows how to use this device type, and get maximum benefit from it. Since you have only one internal HDD to use for installation, connect it to the SATAII_1 port - see manual page 10, item 14. The BIOS will probably look there first for a HDD to detect.

If your mobo BIOS still fails to show the HDD detected properly, you have five possible sources of the problem:
1. Faulty SATA data cable - try another
2. Faulty SATA port on mobo - try another
3. Faulty SATA power connection from PSU - try another
4. Faulty HDD - does your new HDD work (is it detected properly in BIOS) in any other machine?
5. Faulty mobo - does any known-good HDD (works on another machine) get detected on this mobo?

I assumed you were not trying to connect and use a new IDE drive. If I'm wrong and your new unit is IDE, post here for advice on how to connect and set options.