USB drives show but not SATA drives

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Steward09Kyle

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Apr 29, 2014
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I bought replaced my motherboard and it's bringing all kinds of nightmares. The issue I'm having now is that I can't get it to recognize my drives. In the BIOS, it only shows my USB drives I have connected, which is stopping me from reinstalling Windows since I need my drives.

I have 1 Samsung SSD and 2 HDD. None of them show up. I can boot from my USB fine though, and it shows my external hard drive.

I've replaced the cables to the PSU with fresh ones, and I've replaced the cables to the motherboard as well.

I'm at a bit of a loss and don't know how to proceed.
 
Solution
Rogue Leader
Lets get back to the original failure. What, exactly, failed?

I feel like its possible whatever failure you had shorted out your hard drives, and then in plugging them into your new system you damaged the PSU or Motherboard or both. I would inspect the boards on the drives VERY closely.
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Well the new hard drive arrived and performs the exact same way. No sign of it even being on and not showing up in the BIOS. I guess that's a good thing in a way since It's not the drives and I won't lose my stuff.

I'll give the win-to-go thing a shot in a bit. I need a break.
 
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MERGED QUESTION
Question from Steward09Kyle : "What causes hard drives to not power on?"

I've been having a lot of computer issues lately, and have been pretty unlucky.

Two weeks ago my PC died and wouldn't come back on, so I decided it was time to build a "new" one. I reused a few pieces (only hard drives, CPU fan, and case). Everything else I bought new, besides the GPU which I sent back to get a replacement since I still had the warranty, so why not?!

I purchased a new motherboard (ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero), CPU (I7 8700k), RAM (32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX), and power supply (EVGA G3 750w).

After all this, I booted to my hard drives not showing in the bios. I have 3 drives: 1 PNY SSD, 2 hard drives (Seagate SSHD, Seagate Barricuda).

I figured, well crap, maybe whatever blew out, also blew my hard drives. So, back to the store. I purchased another standard hard drive, connected to the PSU + MOBO, still nothing.

Posted on here to see if I could find a fix but there weren't any solutions. One suggested it was the power supply not giving them power, so maybe it was faulty. So I returned the one I just bought and got a replacement, same model, and still nothing.

Which brings me back here. What could possibly be the issue?

The BIOS, I've reset it. I've ensured the SATA ports are enabled (which all say empty). I've "cleared CMOS", didn't help. Replaced the PSU, didn't help. Replaced the hard drives, still nothing. Replaced all the cables from the PSU and SATA, nothing. Repositioned the SATA cables on the motherboard to see if there's a difference.

I did notice today, after reading through the motherboard manual, that the dedicated HDD light that signifies there is a HDD connected, isn't on. So it's not detecting at all, which I shine is because they aren't turning on. I don't feel any vibrations in the drives. No sound. They're completely dead.

What are all the possible solutions to this issue?

I was gonna send for a replacement motherboard, but why would that have anything to do with the power of the drives?
 
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Lets get back to the original failure. What, exactly, failed?

I feel like its possible whatever failure you had shorted out your hard drives, and then in plugging them into your new system you damaged the PSU or Motherboard or both. I would inspect the boards on the drives VERY closely.
 
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Solution
I don't know what it originally was. The screen went black and I couldn't even get to the BIOS. I tried HDMI in the GPU & Motherboard, and neither would load. So I figured it was the motherboard. But I couldn't even find a Z97 board, so I decided it was time to upgrade everything and just bought new parts.

Originally, everything would turn on. The motherboard lit up, fans spun, but wouldn't display anything at all. When it did that, I could smell something burning. The motherboard didn't have any visible signs of being blown out. I thought I could smell it from the gpu, so I sent that back for a replacement. I've never opened up the hard drives.
 
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Sorry for the quick follow up.

I just took your advice into consideration and unplugged all my old drives, and kept the new one plugged in. The drive shows up. Now I'm gonna try to plug in one at a time to see if it's a specific one.
 
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I'd bet one of them is shorting you out. Let us know how it goes. You don't need to physically open the hard drives, you can see the board from the bottom usually.
 
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Thank you for your time,

I plugged in each drive individually but none of them power up. I'm gonna guess they're all dead. So I'll proceed with the one hard drive and take the rest to a shop to see if my stuff can be recovered.
 
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Sorry you lost your hardware, but glad at least you have an answer now.
 
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