Question Mechanical SATA drive can't be initialised

[bwallx]

After swapping mobos and rebuilding PC, a SATA Western Digital 3Tb drive is no longer 'seen' by Win 10 and Aoemei Partition Manager says it needs Initialising. I tried both MBR & GPT but it failed "incorrect function".

DMDE hund acessing the drive till I aborted. But once or twice over a period of days of me fiddling, it did read the drive but as I'm not technical it didn't help!

I used a USB booted Hirens utility but nothing on there could see it or if it did reported it couldn't do anything. Nothing useful. Except one did report LBA=0 and ATA version=0 plus describes as:-

SATA \\?\SCSI#disk&even&prod#48 then a very long string of characters.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of stuff on that drive. Any suggestions on how to get it to work please?

Maximus Ranger VII mobo, i7 and Win 10 64

 

[DRagor]

Please start with full list of components BEFORE the rebuild, then list new ones.

After swapping mobos

Same mobo as before or different? If different, did you do clean Windows install afterwards?
Does the BIOS sees the drive correctly?
Tried connecting it to different SATA port? Maybe the port used is disabled on new board due to using other drives/devices.

But once or twice over a period of days of me fiddling, it did read the drive

It would certainly help if you could specify what exactly you did to make it work (if that was something different than just trying same things 100 times).

 

[bwallx]

OK I wasn't clear, sorry.

Same mobo during all this, I only mentioned it to give background as to why I was fiddling. I had been having trouble on the old mobo - Asus Z87 - with the boot drive not always booting. I'll be posting about that separately.

The UEFI bios does not see the drive. I loaded default bios settings and also tried auto or manual CSM but that was just guessing on my part and made no difference.

I swapped sata cables and ports.

I am not a techie and can not identify anything I'd done on the occassions when the drive could be seen. I just reboot or boot from the Hirens USB then from Windows again and try settings in the bios. Yes, I know, you are shaking your head in despair at my bumbling about. I've tried to keep notes though.

I just wonder if it is something simple I'm missing? Thanks for the quick reply anyway.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Check health of the drive. Use HDtune health.
Post screenshot (upload to imgur.com and post link).

 

[DRagor]

Same mobo during all this

Asus Z87

Same mobo is when it is exactly same model, revision, etc. If you had some other Z87 model and now its Ranger then its not same mobo.

with the boot drive not always booting

Was that the same drive you have trouble now? If you have multiple drives on this system please list them all.

I am not a techie and can not identify anything I'd done on the occassions when the drive could be seen

So, to sum it up: the drive is not listed in BIOS, but sometimes it did work for unknown reason (which means it had to bee seen by BIOS on those occasions). To me, it sounds like dying drive. If during your 'fiddling' you happen to make it work again immediately backup it, as you may not have another chance.

 

[bwallx]

On the last occassion I could see it - booting from the Hirens USB, I used the Hirens PE windows to start copying off the files. BUT it is a 3 Tb drive - where was I supposed to copy 20,000 images? I dug out all my unused drives but this required rebooting and of course then the dodgy drive failed to show up.

Yes I am sure the drive is dying and almost an ex-drive.

The current mobo and the only one relevant is the Maximus. I have two Samsung SSDs one of which is the boot drive, an HGST drive and a Hitachi 2Tb mechanical. The PSU only has 4 SATA flying leads, fixed, it is a 650w

 

[DRagor]

Lots of drives ... if they all work fine on new mobo, it doesn't look like something's wrong with the mobo or your building skills. Interesting though that it failed so quickly. Unless you had problems with it before?