Question Hard Drive not recognized through ANY SATA port but recognized via USB after NVME SSD installation

[Oyavo]

Back in January I bought a Samsung 990 EVO 2TB SSD NVME, and installed it into the M.2 slot. Since then my 2TB Hard Drive is completely unrecognizable by my PC unless via a SATA to USB adapter, yet my older 500 GB HD and 256 GB SSD are completely fine.

NOTE: SATA ports 5 and 6 are disabled on my motherboard using an m.2 SSD, however this problem is occurring in ports 1-4, NOT 5-6.

Here's my PC build:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
• Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard
• Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
• Storage:
  • (Boot Drive) Samsung 990 EVO 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X2 NVME Solid State Drive = [50% full]
  • [PROBLEM AREA] Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB 2.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive (2 TB Hard Drive) - [0% full]
  • Samsung Spinpoint M9T 2 TB 2.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive - [0% full]
  • Samsung 860 Evo 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive - [80% full]
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 3080 GAMING X TRIO 10G GeForce RTX 3080 10GB 10 GB Video Card
• PSU: Corsair AX760 760 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

I've tried all of the following:

• Formatting and repartitioning to NTFS simple volume;
• Repartitioning to both F: (unused) and E:/D: (used)
• Formatting and not repartitioning
• SATA slots 1,2,3,4 all same result; 5 and 6 appear to be disabled since the M.2 installation (SSD and 500GB HD work from all 4 slots however)
• Daisy-chaining drive power cables
• Giving the drive its own power cable
• Connecting drive while PC is on
• Connecting drive before turning pc on
• Converting drive to GPT from MBR

Some further notes:

• PC was purchased secondhand ~8 years ago, nearly all parts have been replaced since except the non-NVME hard drives and PSU which have had no problems prior to adding the 2TB SSD into the m.2 slot.
• Only shows up in disk manager / bios when connected via USB
• The 500 GB HD was formatted and partitioned using the exact same USB adapter
• The one time it did show up was when I connected it to SATA3 daisy-chained with only the 256GB SSD and NVME, but once I connected the 500 GB HD it stopped showing up again no matter what.
• The drive is almost always spinning when plugged in, yet still does not appear.

Update: I managed to get the hard drive to show up again via SATA 3, however it took around 30 seconds to show up after system boot, and has since disconnected after connecting the remaining drives to SATA 1 and 2. Despite then disconnecting the other two drives, the 2TB hard drive hasn't reappeared.

Update 2: In the process of updating this post, the drive has shown up again, after nearly 1-2 minutes post-boot despite spinning the whole time.


Any help is immensely appreciated, I've spent hours on this and only had the drive show up a single time, which then went away on reset.

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

List all attached peripherals.

= = = =

Check the motherboard's User Guide/Manual for supported storage devices and configurations.

 

[Oyavo]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

List all attached peripherals.

= = = =

Check the motherboard's User Guide/Manual for supported storage devices and configurations.

I've updated the post with more information, please let me know if any further info is needed. I've already consulted the manual, and while SATA 5 and SATA 6 should be disabled, I am only using SATA 1-3 with the problem persisting across all three for exclusively the 2TB hard drive.

 

[geofelt]

The specs say that sata ports 5 and 6 will be unavailable with a populated m.2 device:
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B450-TOMAHAWK-MAX/Specification

 

[evermorex76]

The specs say that sata ports 5 and 6 will be unavailable with a populated m.2 device:

As OP has said twice now that they're aware of and that they're not using those ports (although given the post timing maybe that wasn't noted before the edits and this reply happened just before it was added).

I am only using SATA 1-3 with the problem persisting across all three for exclusively the 2TB hard drive.

Truly bizarre and I can't offer any suggestions for this if it it's actually an intermittent issue. If it had never suddenly appeared at all, you could say there's a solid issue with compatibility somehow. You say it won't even appear in the BIOS? If you remove the new Samsung drive does the problem magically disappear?

• [PROBLEM AREA] Toshiba MQ01ABD050 500 GB 2.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive (2 TB Hard Drive) - [0% full]
• Samsung Spinpoint M9T 2 TB 2.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive - [0% full]

One of those you've got indicated as both a 500GB and a 2TB, and you said the 500GB was fine. Which is the actual problem drive? What was your previous boot drive? Is the BIOS current? Have you tried just resetting the BIOS to defaults?

I had a weird issue with my ASUS X570 board and the Ryzen 5 3600 XT, in that NVMe drive activity didn't cause the drive activity light on the case to light up, but use of a SATA disk did light it up. It was my first NVMe drive and I thought since it wasn't on the SATA ports, and NVMe is just a PCIe slot, maybe it wasn't a "disk" to the BIOS so the activity light didn't work for it. Then I upgraded to a 5600X and suddenly the light started working for the NVMe drive. I have no explanation for that, either but there clearly can be really odd issues in regard to drives.

 

[evermorex76]

This appears not to be unique to this board or MSI...

https://www.reddit.com/r/MSI_Gaming/comments/ryrvy2/motherboard_wont_detect_hard_drives/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/oiv9s6/b450_aorus_pro_sata_drive_not_detected_with_2/

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/msi-tomahawk-b450-max-no-sata-drives-detected.3639059/ (bad SATA drives apparently)

The SATA configuration in the BIOS is set to AHCI and not RAID, right? (That ought not to be a problem given that the other SATA drive works fine, of course. Just throwing the kitchen sink at the problem.)

This one was apparently just had a power issue.

https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threads/sata-not-working-properly-on-b450-tomahawk-max-ii.367623/

Do your SATA power connectors have the orange 3.3V cable? This drive did work previously, with the only change being the boot SSD, right?

 

[fzabkar]

Show us a SMART report:

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/smart/

 

[SkyNetRising]

I've already consulted the manual, and while SATA 5 and SATA 6 should be disabled,
I am only using SATA 1-3 with the problem persisting across all three for exclusively the 2TB hard drive.

Which ports do you think are SATA5/SATA6 ?

Furthest away from cpu are ports SATA1/SATA2 (you're probably thinking those are SATA5/SATA6).
SATA5/SATA6 are closest to cpu.
SATA3/SATA4 - between them.

 

[evermorex76]

Show us a SMART report

Kinda hard to do that if the drive isn't recognized by the motherboard or OS.

Which ports do you think are SATA5/SATA6 ?

Not really relevant, since OP tried every port that they thought was 1 to 4, so even if 5 and 6 were accidentally being tried, there would have been at least two others that would have been valid and should have functioned. (It is kind of poor/non-intuitive design to have the ports that are on the chipset separated like that, while having the ones via the CPU mounted directly next to the non-CPU ports.)

 

[Ralston18]

@Oyavo

I suggest trying to learn more about the drives and drive configurations on your system.

One other way to do that is to use Powershell (built into Windows) and a simple cmdlet ("commandlet") to obtain more information.

Start with the cmdlet Get-PNPDevices

(Results can be lenthy but still informative....)

And then next focus on just the Disk drives.

Specifically the cmdlet to do specifically that is:

Get-PNPDevice -Class DiskDrive
Reference:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/p...evice/get-pnpdevice?view=windowsserver2025-ps

Get cmdlets do not change anything.

You can either type the cmdlet after the PS prompt or copy and paste in the cmdlet if you chose to do so.

For example here are the results from my computer ( Powershell run as non-admin).

= = = =

Windows PowerShell
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Install the latest PowerShell for new features and improvements! https://aka.ms/PSWindows

PS C:\Users\REDACTED> Get-PNPDevice -Class DiskDrive

Status Class FriendlyName InstanceId
------ ----- ------------ ----------
OK DiskDrive Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB SCSI\DIS...
OK DiskDrive KBG30ZMS256G NVMe TOSHIBA 256GB SCSI\DIS...
Unknown DiskDrive Verbatim STORE N GO USB Device USBSTOR\...
Unknown DiskDrive WDC WD10 EARS-00MVWB0 USB Device USBSTOR\...
Unknown DiskDrive SABRENT SCSI Disk Device SCSI\DIS...
Unknown DiskDrive SABRENT SCSI Disk Device SCSI\DIS...
Unknown DiskDrive Apple iPod USB Device USBSTOR\...
Unknown DiskDrive KINGSTON SV300S37A120G USB Device USBSTOR\...
OK DiskDrive ATA Samsung SSD 870 SCSI Disk Device SCSI\DIS...
Unknown DiskDrive ST350032 0AS USB Device USBSTOR\...
Unknown DiskDrive ATA Samsung SSD 870 USB Device USBSTOR\...
Unknown DiskDrive SanDisk Cruzer USB Device USBSTOR\...


PS C:\Users\REDACTED>

= = = =

Those are, of course, the drives installed on my system (present = OK, past = Unknown).

If the cmdlet is run on your system do the "OK" Status drives match the drives installed on your system?

Are there any drives not recognized or unexpected?

You can make comparisons with Device Manager (Disk Drives) and Disk Management as well.

Much more detail can be obtained. However the above cmdlets are a good starting point.

What would be interesting to discover is if drives appear/disappear (i.e., intermittently) even in Powershell.

 

[fzabkar]

Kinda hard to do that if the drive isn't recognized by the motherboard or OS.

The OP can sometimes see the missing drive(s). However, the OP seems to be confusing the MQ01ABD050 HDD, a 500GB model, with a 2TB drive.

Since then my 2TB Hard Drive is completely unrecognizable by my PC unless via a SATA to USB adapter,

Update: I managed to get the hard drive to show up again via SATA 3, however it took around 30 seconds to show up after system boot, and has since disconnected after connecting the remaining drives to SATA 1 and 2. Despite then disconnecting the other two drives, the 2TB hard drive hasn't reappeared.

Update 2: In the process of updating this post, the drive has shown up again, after nearly 1-2 minutes post-boot despite spinning the whole time.