One for PC experts - Old hard drive not detected on new motherboard?

Shaolin_Monkey

Hi all. I wonder if anyone who knows about building PC's might be able to help on this.

I'm reasonably savvy with regards to PC components and so on (been building my own since the days of the original Pentium's), but I have run into an issue with this new build that is puzzling me. I recently upgraded to a new self built computer using the parts below:

Gigabyte GA-H87M-HD3 Motherboard
Core i5 4570 3.2Ghz Haswell CPU
16Gb Corsair DDR3 1600mhz (2 x 8Gb)
Seagate 1Tb Hybrid SSHD
LG SATA DVDRW drive
380w Antec Earthwatts PSU in an Antec case.

It's using the CPU's onboard graphics.

This all works very well. It's very stable, and running Windows 7 x64 fine. It installed in UEFI mode.

The trouble is when I've tried to add an older 2009 vintage Samsung hard drive (a 1Tb, SATA 2 drive) to this computer as a backup and storage drive.

I've tried installing it on several SATA ports (there are 6 in total), and used different SATA cables, but it's not detected in the BIOS on the new PC. Anything else (USB flash drives, SATA DVD drive, the main Seagate drive) is automatically detected without issue. Also Windows will not boot up with this second disk plugged in, failing at the "Starting Windows" screen. The only option is to power off the PC at this point.

The Samsung drive works on other computers. I've got it running at this moment on another computer running the Samsung diagnostics software on it. It's showing a couple of sector errors, but no real show stoppers. With the fact it's not even detected in BIOS, it's acting like there is an incompatibility between the Samsung drive and the new motherboard. Is that likely to be the case?

Any suggestions appreciated.

EchoLocation

Are there any SATA options available in BIOS?

Alias_Omega

I did post something, but it was for IDE not SATA.

I edited it and it went wrong so I deleted it.

Sorry/

Shaolin_Monkey

EchoLocation wrote: »

Are there any SATA options available in BIOS?

The only ones I can see in the BIOS are the option to use UEFI, Legacy or UEFI/Legacy - the third option is the default and what it is set to. Available SATA modes are IDE, RAID or AHCI (the default is AHCI, which is what it is set to).

cookie365

Has this drive ever had an OS installed on it?

I'm pushing the boundaries of my knowledge here, but it might be appearing to the BIOS as a corrupted boot drive.

S0litaire

Try setting the BIOS to "Legecy"
I have had some UEFI based motherboards not see a drive it's it's formatted in a certain way.

Also does the install disk see the Disk drive ? even though the motherboard does not see it?

Alias_Omega

Another option..

Purchase a USB SATA HD Caddy from eBay for £5 and try it then. If the HD does not work via the USB option then you know its dead.

How about Right-click on MyComputer then Manage, then click on DiskManagement. Does it show up as being fitted but not working?

Shaolin_Monkey

cookie365 wrote: »

Has this drive ever had an OS installed on it?

I'm pushing the boundaries of my knowledge here, but it might be appearing to the BIOS as a corrupted boot drive.

Yes it's an old disk that has currently got a bootable copy of Windows 7 on it. I've now put the disk back in the old machine and it booted up as per usual.

S0litaire wrote: »

Try setting the BIOS to "Legecy"
I have had some UEFI based motherboards not see a drive it's it's formatted in a certain way.

Also does the install disk see the Disk drive ? even though the motherboard does not see it?

I can give that a try. I'm a bit concerned though this will stop the PC from booting (as Windows has installed itself using the GPT type partition tables which I understand are only bootable by a UEFI BIOS).

I guess by install disk you mean the Windows 7 installer? I'm not sure because the second disk wasn't in there when I installed Windows. The plan was to fit the second drive after everything was working properly and eventually use it for backups. However, it won't even boot into Windows with the second drive plugged in.

As a bit of further info it will boot into Linux Mint (run from a USB stick) with the second disk plugged in, but it takes a long time to boot (it stalls on trying to initialise a device on ATA6 which is the drive in question) and when it does boot up the Samsung disk is not available, and not detected by Gparted or Disk Manager.

Another option..

Purchase a USB SATA HD Caddy from eBay for £5 and try it then. If the HD does not work via the USB option then you know its dead.

How about Right-click on MyComputer then Manage, then click on DiskManagement. Does it show up as being fitted but not working?

Yes a USB caddy sounds a good idea, thanks :money: I know the disk is working in some capacity because I've put it back into an older PC and booted off it as mentioned above. Unfortunately, I can't check if it's detected in disk management as Windows will not start if it's connected to any of the SATA ports.

johnmc

In the good old days there were jumpers on the IDE drive to set as master / slave. SATA reads the order of booting from Slot 1 and "slave" from Slot 2.

Take the SATA cable out of main disc and see if it recognises the new drive. Try booting from the old one in SATA slot 1.

If the BIOS recognises the old drive on slot 2 with slot 1 empty then set the Mode to AHCI (or to Native SATA if there is no AHCI choice).

Shaolin_Monkey

Thanks for the help but nothing I tried got the new PC to recognise the drive at all, either on it's own or as a secondary drive. I bought a new Toshiba (Hitachi) drive which was recognised straight away without issues. It's quite strange, but I'll just have to chalk it up as a probably faulty drive.

cookie365

Do you actually need the data on the drive? If not, stick it in a usb caddy or via sata to another PC, and delete the existing partitions.