HDD Showing In BIOS but not windows

[Jamok23]

I know this problem has been listed hundreds of times before, but i have been seraching and reading for the past 6 hours and i have yet to find a solution to my problem.

It started with a USB to sata adapter, whether connected to USB 2.0 or 3.0, my drive wouldn't show (both 2.5" and 3.5") so i connected my drive directly to the computer (switched my computer off first) but my hard drive still wont show.

I am trying to install windows on a separate drive so that i can merge 2 SSDs, The HDD i am trying to connect, i have previously had connected to my computer. It was part of a RAID set-up for backups, and i only took it out last week.

the drive shows in my bios, but does not show at all in windows, or in disk management. i have tried 2 different drives and neither of them show. It inst sata port configuration or cables, as I disconnected a 1TB WD drive and im using those cables to connect the new drive.

I have now run out of spare drives, and i cant install windows on any of the drives in my computer as i need them running without windows so i can merge them.

I read online that some guy ran memory diagnostics tool, and that worked for them, but it didnt for me, i have tried a different sata connector, sata cable, and different HDD, nothing has worked so far. However, if i connect my 1TB again, it shows up.

I know that the drives i am trying to connect arent faulty, and the cables arent faulty. I am completely at a loss.

Any help at all will be greatly appreciated.

thanks guys.

 

[techgeek]

Well if this drive was used in a RAID array, it is likely that it needs to have a partition made.

Go into Disk Management and find the drive. It might be better if you only have the OS drive and the drive in question connected. Less chance to make a mistake. So with only these two drives, you should easily be able to determine the correct drive. Find the drive in the bottom panel, and right click it, in the drop down window select New Simple Volume and follow the wizard. Once the partition is created, right click it and format it.

 

[g1abhi]

have you changed the Sata modes in your bios ? from raid to ide or ahci?

 

[Jamok23]

techgeek - thanks for your quick reply, neither of the drives are showing up in disk management, i have tried everything, the only place that they show up is the bios. So im not able to access them from there.

g1abhi - there werent in a proper raid, i used storage spaces, just to make them appear as if they were a single disk. The sata mode has always been left as ahci

 

[techgeek]

Your OS drive doesn't show in Disk Management? It should look similar to this:

 

[Jamok23]

My OS drive does show in disk management, so does my new 240GB SSD and my 1TB mass storage drive. The other drives that im trying to connect dont show up though.

This is what my disk managment looks like now. I also have a 120GB Toshiba HDD and a 320GB samsung HDD connected that arent showing up.

And Windows Explorer

 

[techgeek]

What motherboard do you have? Is this drive plugged into one of the chipset's native SATA ports? Don't plug it into any third party SATA ports.

 

[Jamok23]

Hey dudes, i am now on hour 7 and i finally fixed it haha. As i had used storage spaces the HDDs were technically raided, so connecting them individually they never showed up, even when i connected them both at the same time they didnt show up. but i accidentally opened partition wizard when trying to launch Chrome, and they showed up in it. i had to format the raid software off them and then put a new volume on them, and now they show.

Thank you guys so much for your suggestions, im just glad that this fiasco has come to an end, and i shall start the very simple task of merging 2 SSDs haha.

 

[techgeek]

Glad you sorted it out.