Change to AHCI after installing SSD won't show my HDD

Hey! Just installed Windows 10 on my newly bought Samsung 850 Pro SSD. Before this I changed the SATA Type from IDE to AHCI in BIOS. Unfortunately after successfully installing Windows I now have the problem that I can't access my HDD anymore!

The HDD (a Western Digital 500GB) is listed in the device manager and the disk management (it also shows up in BIOS when I want to select the hard disk priorities, but not in the IDE section which I guess makes sense?). In Windows Explorer, however, I can't find the drive anywhere. I should add that the disk in the disk management also has an exclamation mark, but does not say why this is so.

After unsuccessfully playing around a bit, I decided to boot from my old HDD (a Western Digital 160 GB) which was installed as an IDE. I therefore changed the bios settings to IDE again, and after logging into windows I had access to my WD 500 GB again. Therefore I strongly suspect that this has to do with changing BIOS from IDE to AHCI. However I thought this wouldn't affect other HDDs connected to the mainboard, only the Disk with Windows installed.

Does anybody know how I can get access (in windows explorer) to my WD 500 GB when booting with AHCI settings in BIOS from my Samsung 850 Pro SSD???

naw, ide, ahci don't make much difference in non-system HDDs. stay with ahci. i gather the disk shows up in bios.
device manager doesn't tell you anything? double click the disk.
also check disk management. maybe disk is marked os offline?

no it's not offline, but there is an exclamation mark in disk management... Could the SATA ports play a role in this? Like the place where the HDD is pugged in? (although I did check 2 ports of the 6 I have).

I still find it suspicious that I can't really see the dsik in BIOS (only in the hard disk priorities). Is this normal once one changes to AHCI? I am 100% sure that the disk is fine because I have already accessed files when I did the work around with booting from my old HDD.

Ranger4 said:

Does your old WD hard drive have an operating system on it such as Windows 7. If it has you will have to start up your system selecting the HDD in the BIOS & when Windows 7 starts up you will need to change it over to AHCI. To do that see this Tutorial:

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista

Just to clarify: I have 2 HDD; one WD 160GB with Windows 7 and one WD 500GB with no OS (only files). These two HDDs were used in one system prior to the update to windows 10 and installing the Samsung SSD.

Do you still think it makes sense to switch the HDD to AHCI if I only want to use the 500 GB disk with no OS? And if so, how would I do this if there is no OS installed?

right click the header in disk management. i think it might ask for initialization.

countzero said:

right click the header in disk management. i think it might ask for initialization.

I don't think I can. Here is a screenshot of what I'm seeing.

https://i.imgur.com/Q3gHhoT.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/3EhgYTn.jpg

well, import sounds good.

ok, I solved it by reading about a similar issue someone had!


I simply had to right click the drive in disk management and say that I wanted to import foreign disk...

simply as that. But thanks for your tips!

countzero said:

well, import sounds good.

exactly, thank you!