Windows 8 on GA-Z87X-D3H motherboard not recognising secondary HDDs.

[Thelps]

Hi all,
My new Gigabyte GA-Z87X-D3H main board was working fine at first, before I installed Windows 8. The main board was recognising the 3 attached hard drives and CD drive fine.

However, during the Windows 8 install I noticed that the installer program was interpreting the 3 hard drives all as 'Drive 0' and simply naming them as different partitions (Drive 0 Partition 1, Drive 0 Partition 2, Drive 0 Partition 3). I proceeded with the install and noticed that only 'Drive 0' - my main drive - was formatted, as I would expect.

However, since then Windows does not recognise any other connected Drives except the CD Drive and the Drive on which it is installed. What's even MORE worrying is that now my Main Board's BIOS doesn't recognise the other 2 HDDs either, whereas before it was detecting them fine.

I have changed the BIOS' SATA mode from AHCI to IDE, at which point it DOES recognise the other drives, but then Windows BSODs when I try to boot up so I have to switch back to AHCI to get Windows to boot.

Any ideas as to what can be done to solve this?

 

[Thelps]

No, the motherboard does not recognise the drives either. It recognised the drives when there was no OS installed (I booted into BIOS and drives were listed as attached to relevant SATA ports) but now it only lists the CD Drive and the drive on which Windows 8 is installed.

I used Disk Management, but the drives are not there either.

 

[Thelps]

I discovered the cause of the problemm.

The GA-Z87X-D3H motherboard has two BIOS modes. The '3D' BIOS (the default BIOS) and the 'Classic Mode' BIOS - accessible via the menu on the mid-right of the '3D' BIOS screen.

The SATA ports were 'Enabled' in the '3D' BIOS but set to 'Disabled' in the 'Classic Mode' BIOS. I solved the issue by enabling the SATA ports in both BIOS modes. Now the hard drives are recognised by Windows and the problem is solved.

Your assistance and advice has been very welcome all.