New Hard Drive Not Recognized During Boot-Up or Windows 7 Installation

gregrocker said:

Oh Great One said:

The motherboard is IDE and SATA, and the new hard drives only have SATA connections of course. So, I purchased a power supply SATA adapter and I have a SATA cable running to the motherboard in the first SATA spot (SATA 1 [total of 2 slots]). The BIOS does not tell you which hard drives are recognized, but it allows you to have an initial bootup of first/second/third.

If the mobo has SATA ports why do you need a SATA adapter, and what is a "power Supply SATA adapter?"

Plug the drive you want to install upon directly to SATA1 port alone.

The drive should be detected somewhere in BIOS setup, normally under SATA devices or in the BIOS Boot priority order. It may have its model or serial number to google. If it's now detected then it needs to be reinstalled until it is.

As Doc suggested set SATA controller (where you enabled SATA) to AHCI first to try it.

SATA adapter for the power supply. Look here: COOLMAX SATA POWER ADAPTER 6" Cable - Newegg.com

Apparently, you didn't look at all the BIOS images, there is no section for SATA devices, and the BIOS Boot Priority order only is labelled by HDD-0/HDD-1/HDD-2/HDD-3/CDROM/USB etc. Also, there is no AHCI mode.

AddRAM said:

You have to keep trying different bios configurations until the hard drive shows up on the list on the last picture you have in post #11.

Start with setting the bios to defaults and go from there.

I will get working on that tomorrow when I have a ton of time. I do appreciate everyone's help, and I will try to resolve this with the combination of everyone's knowledge. I will let you know if I can make something happen!

DocBrown said:

I just scrolled thru the ECS manual again. What is your DVD drive, IDE or SATA ? What would happen if you disable all the IDE settings ? I just can not find anything about the AHCI in this manual. True this looks like maybe a 1st generation SATA MB connection type. Max of 2gb memory on the MB. Maybe it won't even recognize a 500gb HD ?????? I can't remember what the first SATA HD's were in GB size.

DVD drive is IDE. I tried disabling all the IDE settings before I posted here and nothing happened. Ummmm, maybe first SATA HD's were only 250GB.

I just bought this hard drive, and I will buy a new Motherboard and CPU before I buy another HD, because IDE is pretty much history, no point in wasting $50 in something old.

"Windows 7" supports both IDE and AHCI mode by default. AHCI offers some performance improvement over IDE and that is why it is preferred- it doesn't means IDE mode won't work with 7 or AHCI is mandatory.


Your issue will be either ;

- SATA data or power cable connection issues.

- Failed HDD

- SATA 1 compatibility issue. This can be solved by adjusting the jumper ( if available ).


I am not sure why you don't want to check for jumper setting to enable SATA 1 mode to rule out that possibility. I can't say for sure that it will be the issue but definitely worth a try - only cost 0$ and two minutes.