Multiple Hard drives not showing up in bios

[jasonlrush]

Hello,

I am an experienced computer user but I am at a loss as to what to do in this situation.

I was running windows 7 with 2 internal hard drives. Both drives worked fine. I bought a SS Drive for the operating system and reinstalled with windows 7 on the SSD. When the OS came up, the other two drives were unavailable. They do not show up in the bios nor do they show up storage manager. I tried swapping out the power and sata cable with the SSD that does work, and it still does not show up in the bios.

So both drives failed right?

Wait.

I keep the same power source and then hook the sata connector up to a 'usb convertor' cable and hook the drive up via USB to different computers and it shows up as an unitialized/unformatted drive.

Now obviously, I do not want to lose the data on these drives and so I don't initialize or format. What is going on here? I swapped all the sata cables around on the mother board, always the same results. SSD works.. none of the others do.

 

[jasonlrush]

another thing to note. I installed a new 2 tb drive after the other two weren't functioning. It installed fine until this weekend. I tried to get the other two drives working and swapped all the sata cables around. now the new drive is acting just like the other two.

 

[fzabkar]

Do the drives spin up?

When the drives are connected to a USB-SATA bridge board, do you see the drive in Device Manager, or are you seeing the USB-SATA bridge IC?

How do UVCView and HD Sentinel identify the drives? UVCVIew talks to the bridge IC whereas HD Sentinel attempts to communicate with the HDD behind the bridge.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

 

[jasonlrush]

Do the drives spin up?

When the drives are connected to a USB-SATA bridge board, do you see the drive in Device Manager, or are you seeing the USB-SATA bridge IC?

How do UVCView and HD Sentinel identify the drives? UVCVIew talks to the bridge IC whereas HD Sentinel attempts to communicate with the HDD behind the bridge.

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/USB_IDs/UVCView.x86.exe
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

fzabkar, I am unsure what You mean for me to do with HD Sentinel. When I connect one of the drives (via USB.. they don't show up connected directly to the motherboard) (I connected the 2 TB that was working most recently) It shows up as an unknown drive .

http://i.imgur.com/stnbt.png

http://i.imgur.com/EjUEi.png

 

[fzabkar]

The USB-SATA converter contains a bridge IC. Your PC talks USB, your drive talks SATA, and the bridge IC is their interpreter.

When the USB-SATA bridge is working correctly, it will show up as USB Mass Storage device in Device Manager. UVCView communicates with the bridge. HD Sentinel, OTOH, tries to communicate with the HDD behind the bridge. If it is unable to do so, it then reverts to reporting the identity of the bridge PCB.

If for some reason you have an issue with your motherboard's SATA ports, then installing your drive in an enclosure may have enabled you to isolate the problem.

Have you tried removing the SSD and then verifying whether the drives can be detected by BIOS? Do the drives spin up? What are their model numbers?

 

[weaselman]

First of all you have to work out how the two drives were setup, by that I mean were they two Sata drives set up as a C: and D: drive. Or did you infact have them setup as a Raid 0 array drive.
When you put a new drive in with a working OS on it, it will by default set the drive letter assignment of the new drive to C:. Any existing drive with a drive letter of C: will result in a conflict since they cannot share a drive letter assignment for a Hd volume.
You would have to load into windows as a check, click on the start pear of windows 7.
In the search box type: Disk Man, select create and format hard disks.
you should then see a list of all HD drive volumes. Right click on the extra drives, not the system drive, and select change drive letter.
eg: SSD should be C: D: E: F: Dvd rom drive. If all are running in Sata mode it should work. Make sure each drive has its own letter assignment. in the list. I would say that the drives may of been setup as a raid 0 array.

 

[jasonlrush]

First of all you have to work out how the two drives were setup, by that I mean were they two Sata drives set up as a C: and D: drive. Or did you infact have them setup as a Raid 0 array drive.
When you put a new drive in with a working OS on it, it will by default set the drive letter assignment of the new drive to C:. Any existing drive with a drive letter of C: will result in a conflict since they cannot share a drive letter assignment for a Hd volume.
You would have to load into windows as a check, click on the start pear of windows 7.
In the search box type: Disk Man, select create and format hard disks.
you should then see a list of all HD drive volumes. Right click on the extra drives, not the system drive, and select change drive letter.
eg: SSD should be C: D: E: F: Dvd rom drive. If all are running in Sata mode it should work. Make sure each drive has its own letter assignment. in the list. I would say that the drives may of been setup as a raid 0 array.

I did not set any drives as Raid. Certainly not RAID 0. I don't want double the chance of losing my data for a miniscule of higher read write speed. As I stated above: Disk manager and the bios do not see the drives at all.

 

[jasonlrush]

The USB-SATA converter contains a bridge IC. Your PC talks USB, your drive talks SATA, and the bridge IC is their interpreter.

When the USB-SATA bridge is working correctly, it will show up as USB Mass Storage device in Device Manager. UVCView communicates with the bridge. HD Sentinel, OTOH, tries to communicate with the HDD behind the bridge. If it is unable to do so, it then reverts to reporting the identity of the bridge PCB.

If for some reason you have an issue with your motherboard's SATA ports, then installing your drive in an enclosure may have enabled you to isolate the problem.

Have you tried removing the SSD and then verifying whether the drives can be detected by BIOS? Do the drives spin up? What are their model numbers?

Using the USB adapter, I have the capacity to bring them online as it asks me to initialize the disk. I don't want to lose my data, so I have not taken this step as of yet.

I tried swapping the connectors for the SSD to each of the other drives as they are known good, in hopes of getting them recognized on the bios. It doesn't work. They all show up as not detected. I believe I can bring them online via USB if I allowed the computer to initialize them, but I really don't want to lose the data. I'm willing to do it on one of the drives, but I'm pretty sure that I'll find the disk is fine after initializing an creating a volume.

I have also flashed the bios by taking the battery out for 3 or 4 minutes and then putting it back in.

 

[fzabkar]

"Flashing the BIOS" involves reprogramming a flash memory chip. What you have done, by removing the battery, is to clear CMOS RAM. That's a different thing altogether.

What's puzzling is that Disk Manager senses that a HDD is present, but it can't identify it. This is the kind of behaviour that might be expected of a drive that Powers Up In Standby (PUIS). That's why I asked if your drives spin up.

What are the HDD model numbers, and which motherboard do you have?

 

[jasonlrush]

"Flashing the BIOS" involves reprogramming a flash memory chip. What you have done, by removing the battery, is to clear CMOS RAM. That's a different thing altogether.

What's puzzling is that Disk Manager senses that a HDD is present, but it can't identify it. This is the kind of behaviour that might be expected of a drive that Powers Up In Standby (PUIS). That's why I asked if your drives spin up.

What are the HDD model numbers, and which motherboard do you have?

Remember that this is via USB. When connected directly to the motherboard it doesn't show up at all. Even when I use multiple ports and multiple SATA Cables, all of which are known good.

ST2000DM001

WD10EALS (when I pulled this one out I found the bottom circuit board to be burned and scarred black) Problem solved on this one.

STM3500630AS

I'm pulling this drive out and trying one more time without it in the chain.

 

[jasonlrush]

restarted with scorched hard drive pulled out and there is no change to the other 2 drives.