Adding a second sata hard drive to a dell optiplex 760

[hawksi36]

Hello,
I need help with installing a second SATA hardrive to my Dell Optiplex 760. I have it plugged in to the power supply and the motherboard, then restarted my computer, but it's not showing the drive in the list. What else do I need to do?

 

[o1die]

Go to windows device manager listed in the control panel of windows 7 or under "system" in windows xp. At the top of the control panel is a group of small icons. Try clicking on the far right one which detects new devices. Then click underneath in the hardrive listing to see if windows detected it. I also use maxtor's maxblast 5.0 software to prep or clone a new drive. It's a free download. You install it and reboot. Then click on the icon for options.

 

[hawksi36]

I tried the device manager...no results. What I am looking at is the fact that I have 2 SATA ports on the motherboard. One is white, marked <SATA2>, the other is black, marked <SATA3>. Which one is the right one to choose?

 

[davcon]

Doesn't matter SATA3 is backwards compatible with SATA2 devices.

 

[hawksi36]

Hello,
I need help with installing a second SATA hardrive to my Dell Optiplex 760. I have it plugged in to the power supply and the motherboard, then restarted my computer, but it's not showing the drive in the list. What else do I need to do?

I resolved the issue by removing the factory-installed jumper from the drive unit, since SATAs do not require one to be MASTER and the other one SLAVE. Once I did this, I rebooted the OS and went into BIOS to add the second drive to the boot sequence. After I did that I rebooted so the OS could recognize the drive, then formatted it from RAW to NTFS. It now works as advertised.

 

[hawksi36]

nice work.
optiplex 760 is a solid unit.
let me know if I can assist you in the future.
or try too... LOL

Thanks. I had 7 IT guys trying to assist me, but they finally said they couldn't assist. I did some research <google> and found similar issues, but in the end, it was trial and error that got my drive operating. "Never say die!" I have no IT degree, just a novice, so I guess you can say "even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while".

 

[hawksi36]

Best answer selected by hawksi36.

 

[hawksi36]

How many IT gUYS does it take to add a hdd?

Think you got your answer there

Ummmm...zero? LOL! 😱