Solved Acer Aspire X3400 does not recognize two HDD

[Dali362]

There are many threads about HDD not being erecognized, but either I´ve missed something or the advices posted here are irrelevant.

Acer Aspire desktop running WIN 7 (64) does not recognize two out of my three external HDD. Trying to start the computer with either of these two HDD connected, the computer gets stuck at these messages:
Del: Enter setup, and F12 : Boot menus. However, pushing the respective buttons nothing happens and the computer does not boot. After disconnecting the HDD , shutting the computer down by the On button and then starting again, the PC boots normally.

The funny thing is that our Compaq 8200 Elite, also running WIN 7 (64) does recognize the problem HDDs without problem. It even starts with the problem HDDs connected to it. Therefore I assume there´s nothing wrong with the HDDs .

Any ideas?

 

[SIW2]

If the external disk works on another pc then possibly the problem is the connection on the Acer. Have you tried a different usb port?

 

[Dali362]

If the external disk works on another pc then possibly the problem is the connection on the Acer. Have you tried a different usb port?

I have just done acc your suggestion. One of the problem HDD is now recgnized in one USB port (out of five), the other HDD ist still not recognized.So there is something else, but since the HDD that is now recognized (even if it is in one port only) is the most important (actually crucial), i´ll leave things as they are for now.

I have checked out the third HDD with various USB ports is that was recognized before and it is recognized in all USB ports. It is all intriguing.

 

[Megahertz07]

I would say that on BIOS the boot priority is set to USB and that the drive, although it has no OS, it once had and it set as active.
In other words, your computer is trying to boot from the USB drive.

 

[Dali362]

You are right, there seems to have been some sort of a residual on the external HDD. I copied the document files to anopther HDD, then reformatted the HDD thoroughly with G-parted and the no-recognition problem is now gone. Thanks for your advice.

 

[Megahertz07]

You didn't need to clean or format the drive. All you needed was to set as Non Active with Disk Manager or Mini tool Partition.

Anyway, good to hear you fix it.

Please mark this thread as Solved.