HDD's Not detected in BIOS nor Disk Manager - 9 Drives Tried Everything

Kiliona · October 24, 2020

Hello. I have a computer (windows 10 home, i9-9900k, 1080ti, z390 asrock taichi ultimate mobo, 2x 8gb ram) that I am trying to install new hard drives in. I currently have an SSD and a HDD and I am wanting to install an additional 3 2 tb drives, possibly with storage spaces raid 5 like setup on the new drives, for video editing.

I ordered 3 seagate BarraCuda 2 TB 6 Gb/s 7200 RM 256 mb cache hard drives from amazon, plugged them in, undetected in BIOS and disk manager. Tried plugging one in at a time, same story. Tried unplugging my existing HDD, and plugging those same cables (power and data) into each one of the new drives seperately and same story nothing detected. I figured something must have gone wrong in shipping and sent them back and replaced them with 3 2 TB 5400 rpm WD blue drives from amazon. Same story on those drives, tried every sata port on my MB and even with the cables that work fine on both my other drives, nothing was detected. Tried plugging one of these drives into a different desktop and still, nothing detected.

Gave up on amazon, figured maybe they don't know how to ship things and the drives are getting damaged in shipping. Sent them back again and ordered 3 of the same WD Blue 2 TB off newegg and none of those work either, all the same troubleshooting steps. That means 9 hard drives and I haven't gotten 1 to work, obviously I must be doing something wrong but for the life of me I can not figure out what.

Other troubleshooting steps I've taken besides trying a separate computer, trying different ports, trying known good cables, unplugged everything (all USB's and my PCI USB expansion card thing) and ran with the bare minimum of my boot drive and 1 at a time each of the new drives, is that I've also updated my motherboard bios from 1.2 to 4.3 (tried this last as it scared me the most). I have also tried different settings in BIOS such as turning off ACHI and trying that, turning on/off hot swap, and basically anything I thought might make a difference.

Only hint I've had so far is "dr debug" on my motherboard which gives error codes is giving me an A6 or A9 code while I'm in BIOS which according to the manual means there's an issue with an IDE or SATA device. I've probably installed 10+ drives in my life successfully before this and never had any issues. Can anyone think of anything I'm overlooking? I appreciate your time.

Radium_Angel · October 24, 2020

4 minutes ago, Kiliona said:

I appreciate your time.

You have done all the steps I would have.

Here is something to try:

go down to the local brick and mortar best buy-type store, and buy a cheap hard drive. Plug it in to another computer first and verify it's working.

If it is, then plug it into your system, and see if BIOS sees it. If BIOS does not, plug the drive back into the other system. If it's dead, then your mobo is killing drives, and the mobo needs to be replaced.

AbydosOne · October 24, 2020

45 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

If it's dead, then your mobo is killing drives

Or, more likely, your power supply.

Question: Do you have a modular power supply? If yes, did you use only the cables that came with it?

Kiliona · October 25, 2020

On 10/23/2020 at 6:18 PM, Radium_Angel said:

You have done all the steps I would have.

Here is something to try:

go down to the local brick and mortar best buy-type store, and buy a cheap hard drive. Plug it in to another computer first and verify it's working.

If it is, then plug it into your system, and see if BIOS sees it. If BIOS does not, plug the drive back into the other system. If it's dead, then your mobo is killing drives, and the mobo needs to be replaced.

On 10/23/2020 at 7:04 PM, AbydosOne said:

Or, more likely, your power supply.

Question: Do you have a modular power supply? If yes, did you use only the cables that came with it?

Eureka!!! I do have a modular power supply, and in fact the my old power supply was modular as well. I had just chucked all the modular cables I had into 1 bag since I ignorantly assumed the connectors would be universal (like the SATA end is), and if they weren't they wouldn't physically plug in. I plugged the cable that looked a little different then the others (not braided) into one of my other HDD's and poof, no more HDD (a bit of a shame since I had some old backup footage on it, nothing too important but sad to lose, my own fault I shouldn't have done this with a drive that had anything on it). Never been so excited to have a hard drive destroyed haha. I removed the PSU and examined the cable and it turns out the power cable I had been trying to use has a different pinout then the other SATA power cables I have, see attached picture.

The thing that is still very surprising to me is that the bad cable DOES work for the SSD (thank god, my SSD DOES have important data on it), it wasn't until I plugged it into a HDD that it ruined the drive. Perhaps SSD's don't use all the power pins on the connector or something which is what lead me to believe the cables weren't the issue (that cable worked fine with my SSD but blew up any HDD I plugged in!).

Thank you both so much for your help, I've been fighting this problem for weeks! I'm going to mark this as resolved even though I haven't had a chance to test it with a new hard drive yet since I was at least able to replicate the issue. Fingers crossed for when I get 3 more drives in (I'll do them 1 at a time this time, and I'll try a different computer FIRST).

Radium_Angel · October 25, 2020

4 minutes ago, Kiliona said:

Eureka

Glad you found it.

@AbydosOne

Brilliant suggestion, I never would have thought of that. Good catch!

AbydosOne · October 25, 2020

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Brilliant suggestion, I never would have thought of that. Good catch!

This is definitely not the first time I've seen it here (even in the last couple months). There really needs to be a warning sticker on modular power supplies (right above the output sockets) saying as much. Or (me dreaming here) make it part of the ATX standard.

This is, however, the reason I'll only buy Corsair PSUs at this point. I have so many extra cables that it's nice to be able to just dig in the box and find whatever one I need.

Radium_Angel · October 25, 2020

1 minute ago, AbydosOne said:

This is definitely not the first time I've seen it here (even in the last couple months). There really needs to be a warning sticker on modular power supplies (right above the output sockets) saying as much. Or (me dreaming here) make it part of the ATX standard.

This is, however, the reason I'll only buy Corsair PSUs at this point. I have so many extra cables that it's nice to be able to just dig in the box and find whatever one I need.

I have some modular power supplies right now that I have removed the excess cables and dumped in a bag, thinking if the connection fits, all is good (as the OP did) so you've saved me some headache here....and I learned something new today.