Solved OS HDD not being recognised as secondary drive in different rig

[Boozad]

My backup rig in my daughters' room was running with two 2TB HDDs, the one with the OS on (WD Caviar Black) is split into three partitions, one dedicated to the OS. Anyway, I bought a 120GB Toshiba SSD to fit to the rig (easiest and most pleasurable clean install of Windows 7 I've ever done, lovely) and decided to remove the Caviar Black as the remaining 2TB drive was more than an ample amount of storage for them.

I thought I'd add the 2TB Caviar Black to my main rig as an extra backup drive, but I didn't have the spare SATA cables I thought I had. Not a problem as my case has a hot swappable X-Dock so I connected the drive through that with the intention of formatting it before fitting it permanently when I'd bought some cables.
The drive never appeared in Computer or Disk Management though, I thought nothing of it as maybe there was no power to the X-Dock and left the rig for half an hour to go and do something else. When I came back I removed the drive and it was red hot so obviously there was power to it, so I let it cool down and reinserted it. Again it never appeared, but I could here the drive working and when I removed it I could feel it rumbling so it had been doing 'something'.

I did check the X-Dock connections and they're good (photo below) so that's not the issue. Before I go opening my rig up and fitting it permanently only to find it doesn't work, am I missing something blindingly obvious as to why the disk isn't showing up at all? As ever, any input is greatly appreciated.

 

[TVeblen]

I'm not sure why. Does the hot swap bay use a standard SATA connection (to one of the 6 native chipset SATA ports)?

Do you think this may have anything to do with that "Dual Boot HDD Switch"?

And I notice multiple HDDs in your rig. Why not borrow one of the SATA cables from a data drive?

 

[Boozad]

I've never used the dual boot switch as it only supports HDDs, and didn't think it would include the X-Dock bay. Worth a shot though. Good point on borrowing cables from another HDD as well, wish I'd thought of that earlier!

 

[Boozad]

Problem sort of solved. I opened up the case and used the cables from an existing drive and the disk was recognised. I formatted the partitions to remove the Windows installation and set my rig back to how it was. Then I put the drive into the X-Dock and booted and there it was.
The only issue I have left is that I extended one of the 500GB volumes (it had three partitions; 1TB, 500GB, 500GB) into the other 500GB volume so as not to have a ridiculous amount of partitions and now I've somehow managed to turn it into a Dynamic Disk. I've been thinking about using it to run a VM so I need to sort that out next.

 

[Boozad]

All sorted. I'm sorely tempted just to leave the drive sitting in the X-Dock (how lazy is that eh?) but with absolutely no airflow in there at all it's not a good idea. I suppose I could just keep removing it when I'm not intending to use it and store it, but I do want it permanently accessible so I suppose I'll have to kick my laziness into touch and get it fitted internally. I do have plenty of room so it's not a problem, it's just a pain to get the motherboard side panel back on my case due to the cable routing.

 

[Boozad]

One last post, sorry for waffling on, but having copied some files over as third set of backups the drive isn't really any hotter than the Caviar Black that's fitted internally. It's very warm to the touch but Speccy's saying it looks OK compared to the other one. I might leave it in there for a while and see how it goes, it will get some air to it if I leave the front door of the case open.

 

[TVeblen]

Glad you got it sorted.
Good call on not using the dock as a permanent hard drive bay. Sata data cables are cheap and it is always handy to have a spare or two hanging around, so buy a 3 pack or so and you will be ready if you ever need one.

The Dynamic disk thing was weird. Usually that happens when you add a 5th primary, not shrinking. Did you ever discover how it happened?

 

[Boozad]

The Dynamic disk thing was weird. Usually that happens when you add a 5th primary, not shrinking. Did you ever discover how it happened?

Absolutely no idea, there were four partitions on there including the system reserved partition but I certainly didn't create a fifth. That was what threw me as I've never seen it happen by merging partitions, only adding more. Still, it was a quick simple fix I suppose.

I've ordered a pack of cables and will get the drive fitted internally at some point. It's still sitting in the dock at the moment and I'm monitoring the temperatures, at the moment it's only 4°C warmer than the internal drive so nothing life threatening. I don't think it will be a problem short term just using it as a backup disk as it won't be working, but I really want to use one of the 1GB partitions to do something constructive, ideally a VM so I can try out different operating systems.

Thanks for your help mate, much appreciated.