Hard Drive not always detected

[LeVzi]

I've just installed a third hard disk , its brand new, in my system. At first it wasnt detected, then it was, then it wasnt, its very intermittent as to when it shows up. Sometimes it doesnt show up in the BIOS , other times it does.

I just booted and it wasn't detected in the BIOS, but its showing in windows and its working. I have had a few days of no issues with it, and the drive itself when its dettected is running fine.

Ive updated all my drivers for the motherboard, only thing I haven't done is flash the newest BIOS, but that doesnt say its anything to do with hard drive controllers.

I was thinking a faulty cable, but when I remove one of the other drives and boot, the thing works perfectly. Id think its more due to three drives and the third is causing issues, but why ?

Should I flash the latest BIOS ? Or contact Gigabyte about it ?

Any help is really appreciated, thanks.

 

[Paul NZ]

What are the other 2 hdd's? Normal sata? M.2 or NVME?

 

[LeVzi]

What are the other 2 hdd's? Normal sata? M.2 or NVME?

Normal SATA yes, not in RAID, running AHCI, latest drivers, had the problem before I switched to AHCI tbh.

PSU is 700W which is more than enough to cope with my system.

I did just flash the BIOS, because a quick scout around the internet seems to point to the BIOS as a potential issue, so that is ruled out now.

Unless its' a faulty cable, which I doubt, im lost. Mobo is Gigabyte 970A UD3P

 

[13thmonkey]

try a different cable, try a different port.

 

[LeVzi]

try a different cable, try a different port.

I have moved the port but didn't change the cable. Problem is I cannot feel the drive spinning up, there is vibration in the casing no matter what, but it must be, so you think it could be the SATA cable ?I do have a spare to try. But why would that be intermittent ?

 

[13thmonkey]

You have got 2 cables plugged in? Power and Data.

 

[LeVzi]

You have got 2 cables plugged in? Power and Data.

Yes I do.

 

[13thmonkey]

Different cable then, can't recall if it waits for a data signal before spinning.

 

[LeVzi]

Different cable then, can't recall if it waits for a data signal before spinning.

Thanks, it is actually working at the moment, so I am gonna use it until later, and then i'll change it.

If the BIOS doesn't pick up the drive, why would it get detected in windows ? Any ideas ?

 

[13thmonkey]

I wouldn't, if it is a bad cable you might get write errors.

 

[BFG-9000]

Could just be the drive is taking too long to spin-up if it doesn't show on cold boot but does on any subsequent warm reboot.

There's a setting in the BIOS to adjust the delay before trying to detect the drives, which Gigabyte calls "Delay For HDD"

Delay For HDD (Secs)
Allows you to set a delay time for the BIOS to initialize the hard drive as the system boots up. The
adjustable range is from 0 to 15 seconds. (Default: 0)

 

[LeVzi]

Different cable then, can't recall if it waits for a data signal before spinning.

This did it, it failed to be detected this morning again,. so I changed the cable and it's showed up first time. I assume this was the solution, if it plays up again I am lost.

Thanks.

Brand new cable from PC world going straight back.