PC not detecting HDDs

Magnumwolf

Magnumwolf

Magnumwolf

Associate
Joined
19 Nov 2005
Posts
56
Hi,

Ive just brought a new seagate 500gb harddrive from overclockers, i opened up my PC and plugged in the new drive.
I booted up my pc but when i went into the computer management to format the new drive i found that the drive was not being detected.

I turned the PC off and opened it back up to check all of the cables were in correctly. I started it up again and it still wasnt detected.

So i turned it off again and used the cables from my main harddrive (that i know were working) abd plugged them into the new drive to test it if was a problem with the cables, i turned the PC on again and nothing was detected.

I then switched the cables back so that my main harddrive was plugged in again but when i turned the PC back on my motherboard couldnt detect any harddrives at all.

Ive tried using a few different power cables and sata cables on my old and new drive and im not getting anywhere. I have also tried resetting the bios by taking the battery out for a few minutes but that didnt help either.

My main aim at the moment is to atleast get my old hard drive back up and running

If anyone has any ideas of what might be wrong please let me know, i really need to get my PC running again asap.

Thanks for your help,
-Magnumwolf-
 
Some motherboards have specific RAID SATA ports, make sure yours isn't connected to one of these and correctly in a normal SATA port.
 
ye there are definatly in the correct ports, like i said above it was working fine earlier i havent actually moved the SATA cables on the motherboard i only changed them to the other harddrive and then back
 
OK next step then...
- Does BIOS see the HDD?
- If it does not, confirm all connections are firmly seated, try different power connector from a different PSU cable
- If Yes - load up Windows. Under Admin Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management what drives does it actually show?

Lastly, any details of OS and Motherboard would be useful.
 
The bios does not detect any of the HDDs
Ive checked the cables several times and tried using different cables

Im using Vista 32bit
and the motherboard is Asus P5Q Pro Turbo Intel P45
 
Still looking for some help on this issue if anyone has some new ideas.

Ive tested out a few new things but i still havent come up with an answer

Ive tried 7 different SATA cables so im pretty sure its not a problem with those, ive tried 4 different power cables

I have resset the BIOS and CMOS again, ive also tested an old IDE CD drive and that works fine, i can also boot from USB.
 
Ill have a stab, the drive needs to be initialised. Dont know what os but if vista/w7 go to administrative tools/computer management/storage. You should see the drive. Right click i think and select new simple drive. Follow the instructions. Hope that helped.
 
Some folk are making this more complicated than it needs to be. You have so far confirmed the following:

1. IDE drive works which shows the IDE controller is functioning.
2. Tried several different known good SATA cables.
3. Switched SATA ports and still the same.
4. Reset CMOS/BIOS and can boot from USB.

Here are my questions to you:

1. Can you confirm that the BIOS picks up your other hard drive(s)?
2. Does you new 500GB hard drive work in another system?
3. Can you borrow a working SATA drive from a friend and test it?

If a known good 2nd SATA drive works in your system alongside you exisitng SATA hard drive and your newly purchased hard drive fails in a known good system, then surely the new hard drive you bought is faulty. However if the issue is as you say in your last post that the BIOS does not pick up any hard drives then the issue is with the motherboard as you have ruled out SATA cables.
 
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