SSD drives not showing in BIOS

Jed Shields · 13 Dec 2015 at 18:41

Hi guys,

I'm having trouble with my mobo not seeing either of my SSD drives. I've got an ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen 3, I have a 512GB (Boot & games) and a 256Gb (additional games) Crucial SSD drives, also two WD 1Tb drives (for data). Neither SSD drive shows up in BIOS, but the HDD do. I've removed all drives from the slot in caddy system of my Obsidian 800D and plugged in each seperate drive into each of the bays, rebooting into BIOS each time to see if it's recognised. The HDDs show in every bay, leading me to believe that theirs no issue with the power or cables. None of the SSD drives are picked up in any of the bays. Any ideas? I've tried altering as many of the BIOS options as I can e.g. between IDE and AHCI etc. but can't seem to fix it.

Cheers,

Jed

Jed Shields · 13 Dec 2015 at 20:06

One of the ssd drives is the boot drive, they're not new, the system has been up and running for ages. Shall I try seeing them in another PC?

Jed Shields · 13 Dec 2015 at 21:45

No joy. I plugged it into my other PC and found it no problem. I went into disk management and removed all partitions, created a single drive and reformatted it. Plugged it back into my main PC and nothing. I assume that there's something different in the way a PC sees ssd v hdd drives?

Jed Shields · 13 Dec 2015 at 22:02

Ahhh, that rings a bell. I'm sure I had that issue with my original M4, which is now my secondary games drive. The newer one is 512gb, can't remember the exact models of the top of my head. I'll check later. Is the fix doing a firmware update on my other PC?

Jed Shields · 14 Dec 2015 at 12:01

All set to ahci. I'm pretty sure it won't be the hours bug as they are different ages, but both have failed at the same time. I've also got a Sandisk SSD that I need to try. I'll try a firmware update though, plus a bios update on the motherboard. I'm away for a couple of days so I'll report back later in the week

Jed Shields · 17 Dec 2015 at 08:39

Okay, finally home. I've reflashed the BIOS, cleared the CMOS and tried a Sandisk SSD drive as well as all three of my Crucial SSD drives, still not picking anything up. I'm assuming it must be a motherboard fault?

Jed Shields · 17 Dec 2015 at 16:18

Nope, 4 years old. I've gone back and forth with a technical guy from Asrock and the fault seems to be with the SATA backplane in my Corsair 800D. I've connected dirctly to the SSD drive and it's seen in BIOS. When I plug it back into the backplane it's not seen. However, If I plug a HDD into the same bay then it's seen in BIOS. I just don't understand it!!!! I've emailed Corsair to see if they think there's a fault with the backplane.

Jed Shields · 18 Dec 2015 at 11:18

FYI, I've fixed it! It turns out that the issue was with the hotswap caddy system. The HDD drives went in correctly as there was no room for any vertical movement. The SSD ones had a chance of them not sliding in flush and kicking up slightly, missing the connectors at the back. I'm guessing this is due to the fact that the SSD drives have a much lower profile and so nothing to keep it "on track". I must have been lucky the previous times I've slid them in. That took me days to pinpoint and I fluked it as I had the side off and noticed the slight deviation through some gaps in the hotbay frame. Phew!