Hard Drive Dissapears after installing 2nd SATA Drive

[68iou1]

Hi Everyone,

I just bought a 1.5TB Seagate SATA HDD Which I will be using as a data drive. I have my Primary 320gig sata hd which i use for windows. Now when I go to install the 1.5tb Drive, it detects it on first boot in the bios. when it trys to boot, it hangs on a black screen and doesnt move. When I go to restart, the 320 Primary Drive dissapears and only the 1.5tb drive is visable.

So what I've tryed to do is ive disconnected the 1.5tb drive, i left the 320 drive connected and it booted up fine. got into windows and worked as normal. but when I plugged in the 2nd drive it doesnt boot up. and when it doesnt boot, you restart and the 320 dissapears. I've also ghosted my 320gig drive to the 1.5tb drive. My 320 contained 2 partitions (C: for windows and D: for data) So atm im using my 1.5tb drive like my 320 with the C and D. But would anyone know the issue why I cant have both drives in there.?

Here are the troubleshooting steps I took

1) Changed SATA Cables
2) Changed the sata order (Plugged primary in SATA 2 and DATA HD in SATA 3 to see if the ports are faulty
3)Took out the IDE CD-ROM
4) Tryed to mess around in the bios and nothing worked.

Also using an ASUS P5ND mobo with lastest bios update.

 

[Jonathan_King]

What is the power supply like? Make sure the power cables are on a different branch, if possible.

Perhaps the PSU isn't sending out enough power for both drive on a single cable?

Just a guess.

 

[68iou1]

PSU is a gigabyte ODIN 800watt i think. It connects an IDE HD, should be more then enough power. Any other suggestions

 

[Jonathan_King]

Maybe the PSU is defective. Can you try a different branch?

 

[68iou1]

You mean different SATA Power connectors? My PSU is through cable management, cant find the case with the cables =/. Well I have 3 Connectors on that one cable, I can try that.

 

[68iou1]

Update: Changed SATA Power connectors (Used seperate Power connectors) I plugged in another SATA Power Connector in the cable management PSU. That didnt work.

I loaded Hirens Boot CD tryed to fix the mbr and boot. that didnt work. Loaded a Partition Manager and apparently there was errors on the disk. that apparently fixed the errors. Loaded the mini windows xp on hirens but it didnt load the 320 gig drive. It loaded the 1.5tb drive. It was like it wasnt there. When I restarted the comp, the 320 dissapeared again. Took out the 1.5tb drive and it loaded upn windows fine. Took out the 320 and plugged in the 1.5tb drive and that loaded windows fine. Any other ideas or suggestions? Would be greatly appreciated.

 

[68iou1]

Any Ideas anyone? Still cant get it to work.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Is it possible you could try those disks in another machine?

 

[MadMaxData]

When you hook up your new drive, and go into the BIOS to see if it's listed, make sure you go into the boot sequence category to make sure your 320GB is listed as the first boot HDD. Also, set your HDD as the first boot device [I always do this anyway].

Some SeaGate drives do inded have master/slave jumpers [as do some Western Digital] so check for a conflict. I doubt it's that though, since your using two different channels for the drives. I wouldn't completely rule it out though. Stranger things have happened.

As a last resort, you might have to enable the SATA Spread Spectrum if your recieving frequency interference between the two drives.

Also, it's not uncommon for the BIOS not to display a drive. My channel 4 master is NEVER displayed, whether I have a HDD hooked up to that channel, or an optical drive. I don't know why that is, but the devices always work without being listed, so it's no big deal.

 

[68iou1]

It gives me an error.

Non-System Disk press any key to continue. Does it matter if I have windows 7 on both of the drives? Because I ghosted the 320 on the 1.5tb when I couldnt get both of them to work.

320gig is on the SATA1 and 1.5 is on SATA2. Boot device priority is 1st boot is set to the 320 gig.

 

[68iou1]

I enabled the SATA Speed Spectrum. Didnt do anything. with both drives in there i cant even boot from a windows 7 to fix the mbr and boot???

-edit. I took out the 1.5 and booted up fine. It even went into the windows setup fine as well. So whats with the system disk error i got before? It doesnt seem like it the mbr or boot?

 

[MadMaxData]

If all you have on the 1.5TB drive is a backup image, I would wipe that disk clean, and worry about getting both of them working together first. Then do an image backup after they are playing nice together.

Make sure you have the 320GB drive chosen as your master OS when you go to...Start> Computer> Properties> Remote Settings> Advanced Tab> Startup & Recovery Settings.

 

[CommonTater]

Any Ideas anyone? Still cant get it to work.

Ok... Are you 100% certain that drive is brand new?

It's acting like it's got a boot sector already on it, which would indicate that it's been at least tried before. The extra boot sector is probably confusing windows on which drive to boot to... hense, the startup failure.

The solution is to capitalize on the SATA hot swap feature...

Plug in the new drive's power cable only... do not connect the data cable.
Start your system from the other drive
Go into device manager
Now connect the new drive's data cable
Tell device manager to scan for hardware changes
Once it finds the new drive switch over to disk management
In disk management, delete any existing partitions and format the drive.

Next, reboot,
in your BIOS make sure both drives are being detected.
Also make sure that your primary boot drive is the first drive on the list.
If it isn't, swap the data cables and come back to this step.

Also in the BIOS be sure to set your boot order to test the main drive first, not your new one. If you can exclude the second drive from the list you should do so.

Since you are on Win7 you should also check that AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. If it's in "Compatibility" mode some older SATA controllers will only alow one SATA HD on your system.

If all went well, you should now be able to start up your machine normally and begin setting up the new drive.

 

[MadMaxData]

It's acting like it's got a boot sector already on it, which would indicate that it's been at least tried before. The extra boot sector is probably confusing windows on which drive to boot to... hense, the startup failure.

That's why I said wipe the 1.5TB drive clean. So we're thinking the same thing.

The solution is to capitalize on the SATA hot swap feature...

Plug in the new drive's power cable only... do not connect the data cable.
Start your system from the other drive
Go into device manager
Now connect the new drive's data cable

Plug the data cable into a SATA HDD with the machine powered up? YIKES! No offense, but you couldn't pay me enough to do that. Well, I suppose you could pay me the price of a new HDD and/or motherboard to do it....LOL

Seriously Bro, you plug cables into hardware when the machine is powered up? I ask you this because it's the second time now you have advised someone to do this. The first one you told someone to start up their rig with the CMOS jumper shorted, and to change it over while powered up. None of these things sound like a healthy thing for hardware. Do you know something I don't, because nobody I know does that?

 

[CommonTater]

Plug the data cable into a SATA HDD with the machine powered up? YIKES! No offense, but you couldn't pay me enough to do that. Well, I suppose you could pay me the price of a new HDD and/or motherboard to do it....LOL

You might want to give these a read...

Serial ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Serial ATA in the Microsoft Operating System Environment
http://www.serialata.org/technology/why_sata.asp

Seriously Bro, you plug cables into hardware when the machine is powered up? I ask you this because it's the second time now you have advised someone to do this. The first one you told someone to start up their rig with the CMOS jumper shorted, and to change it over while powered up. None of these things sound like a healthy thing for hardware. Do you know something I don't, because nobody I know does that?

Well, it works like this... On most motherboards the CMOS jumper merely disconnects the battery, it doesn't ground anything. But that is not universally true. On some boards, removing the jumper outright sets the BIOS into read only mode so the user can't make changes... but that's also not universally true. So, you were right on that one. As a precaution I recanted on the advice lest someone should try it on one of the boards where it's not true.

However... a key part of SATA is the ability to hot swap drives. This is an essential feature for servers running raid, NAS boxes and USB drives... You don't want to shut down the main server to change a drive ... that's just not practical in today's online world. Really check it out... it's part of the design, microsoft supports it and even Wikipedia tells about it...

 

[MadMaxData]

However... a key part of SATA is the ability to hot swap drives.

I guess you learn something new every day. I would still be a bit leary of unplugging hardware, or plugging in hardware on a powered up motherboard though. I did that once when I was first starting out, many moons ago, and completely destroyed a HDD & motherboard. I'm not saying it can't be done, after having read the info you provided, but something inside me still screams "don't do it." Guess I have to catch up with the new technology.

 

[CommonTater]

However... a key part of SATA is the ability to hot swap drives.

I guess you learn something new every day. I would still be a bit leary of unplugging hardware, or plugging in hardware on a powered up motherboard though. I did that once when I was first starting out, many moons ago, and completely destroyed a HDD & motherboard. I'm not saying it can't be done, after having read the info you provided, but something inside me still screams "don't do it." Guess I have to catch up with the new technology.

1) Take a look at the hot swap bays for SATA drives... no electronics, just a bracket.

2) Why do you think I told the OP to connect the drive POWER but not the Data cable? This is to prevent damaging surges from the power supply.

 

[68iou1]

Ok guys update.

This is what I have done so far. Ive disconnected the 1.5TB Drive DATA SATA Cable. Left the Power cable in. Turned the pc on and got a invaild system disk or something. So i ran Hirens boot cd, fixed everything with the mbre and boot. Restarted and Drive wasnt there. Turned off PC from the power, started it up again and the drive was there. But it couldnt get into windows. So I thought to my self, ok? No SATA DATA cable in the 1.5TB and still not booting? So I took out the power cable. Booted it up again and got into windows fine? Turned it off, put ONLY the Power cable in, and didnt work. So I changed it over again, put the 1.5 data and sata cable in and only put in the power cable for the 320 so i can try the hot swapable feature. For some odd reason windows booted up (under the 1.5tb as the main). So connected the sata cable to the 320 whilst the pc was on. It found the drive did some things and then crashed. Couldnt move the mouse ctl alt delete wouldnt work. Turned it off. And just took out the 320.

Does that only leave my PSU as the fault in this? There is surely enough power. Only running a GTX275, 4 GIG ram, (took out my IDE CD-ROM as well)

Faulty PSU?

 

[MadMaxData]

1.) Have you tried wiping the 1.5 drive clean, and then initializing the disk in Computer Management?

2.) Have you tried using different data cables on your SATA drives? It could be a bad cable from the sound of it.

It's definately not your PSU.

 

[68iou1]

For Question 1. it wouldnt make a difference since not sata data cable was connected to it (only power cable was)

For 2) I'll use my old ABIT-IC7 MAX3 sata cables that I got with the board.

I'll get back to you in 5 mins