PC won't detect any SATA devices

[orangecat]

To make a long story short my grandmas PC had it's nvme disk fail after only having a total of 5.5TB of data ever written to it. She had it about 3 years and only even used it to store Windows and a few basic programs. Anyways I since replaced the drive with a better one and because there was some data loss I figured I'd grab her a 1TB SATA SSD and use it to make regulars backups of her data so that if in the event that her boot disk ever dies again there will be a copy of it on another disk. However after replacing the main boot drive for some reason her computer won't detect any SATA devices at all. Now I'm generally pretty good with computers and am rarely ever stumped however i can't figure out why this is happening. At first I thought maybe it was a bad connection. I double checked all the power and data connections and I'm convinced they are fine. If I plug in the power cable for example I can hear her optical drive power up and seek. I can also open the disc trap no problem. So I ruled out the power cable. Next I checked the SATA data connections. I used an old SATA cable from her previous computer because I was lazy but I thought maybe the cable had failed so i replaced it with some brand new cables and nothing. Both the optical drive and SATA SSD won't show up. I tried different SATA ports too and nothing. I also updated the BIOS and nothing. I loaded optimized defaults and nothing. In the BIOS it says the SATA controller is enabled and in AHCI mode but nothing shows up under the SATA ports (ie: no connected devices). I was under the impression that when the drives didn't show up in Windows that it may have been related to not having installed the SATA drivers however I've never seen this on a modern PC as almost all onboard SATA controllers are supported out of the box. I also connected the SATA SSD in question to my main PC and it showed up and formatted just fine so I know the disk works. Also 2 SATA controllers show up in Windows so it makes me think that the SATA controllers are working just fine unless they aren't but they're still reported to the system.

I'm kind of out of things to try at this point so i figured I'd ask here and see if anyone has any ideas. I'm probably just gonna go out and buy her a SATA HBA card and slap it in because I don't know what else to try.

Also the motherboard is a ASUS Prime B450M-A rev 1.01 for anyone who is curious.

Also my grandma doesn't know much about computers so I really doubt she did anything to it that would damage it. I'm pretty sure it just sat in the same place since the day I set it up for her. theres also like no dust in it since it's just a basic APU based system running a 3200G.

Anyone know of any good SATA 6gbps HBA cards on the cheap?

[Bombastinator]

Has it ever had sata stuff on it before?  Also specs may be needed.  They’ve been putting m.2 on motherboards since at least haswell.  I don’t know if this is a new machine or an old one.

[Eigenvektor]

Which SATA ports did you try? If you check the board's specs (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/PRIME/PRIME-B450M-A/techspec/), you can see the following:

Quote

2*The M.2 Socket shares bandwidth with the SATA_5/6 ports, and therefore the SATA_5/6 ports cannot be used when an M.2 device is installed.

So depending on which ports you tried, this could be the reason

[orangecat]

18 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Has it ever had sata stuff on it before?  Also specs may be needed.  They’ve been putting m.2 on motherboards since at least haswell.  I don’t know if this is a new machine or an old one.

It had a SATA optical drive since it was built. I don't know if it was ever used. Most likely worked at some point. Currently the system has 1 nvme drive, 1 SATA SSD, 1 SATA optical drive, 1 pci-e Wi-Fi card and other than some ram and a APU nothing else.

[orangecat]

5 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Which SATA ports did you try? If you check the board's specs (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/PRIME/PRIME-B450M-A/techspec/), you can see the following:

So depending on which ports you tried, this could be the reason

Hmmmm. I tried using 5 and 6 however I'm 99.9% sure I also tried other ports. I will double check.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, bigPPchad said:

It had a SATA optical drive since it was built. I don't know if it was ever used. Most likely worked at some point. Currently the system has 1 nvme drive, 1 SATA SSD, 1 SATA optical drive, 1 pci-e Wi-Fi card and other than some ram and a APU nothing else.

@Eigenvektor made a salient point about the sata.  If you only checked a few the others might be working.  I was really hoping to get models there so I could get some idea of the age of the machine.  The existence of an optical drive means more than a year or two generally.  It’s still possible to put 5 1/4” floppies on new machines though if you can get the right adaptors (Haswell was 2014 btw)

[orangecat]

19 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Which SATA ports did you try? If you check the board's specs (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/PRIME/PRIME-B450M-A/techspec/), you can see the following:

So depending on which ports you tried, this could be the reason

By the way you were right. Some of the SATA ports were disabled. I had the drives plugged into 5/6 and they are disabled. However I also used 3/4 and it didn't work but 1/2 do. I'm guessing it has something to do with having that pci-e wifi card in as well. Maybe it disables other SATA ports. I was 100% sure I used 4/5 and checked the BIOS and saw nothing. Maybe I need my eyes checked or maybe they don't work. Either way I'm not going to waste my time checking at this point since I know 1/2 are working. Also maybe I should have known better also. I've always built myself higher end systems and never had this be an issue however my grandmas PC was built on a budget and I picked up a b450 board on the cheap not thinking that some SATA ports may be disabled when some pcie devices are used. I never had this happen to me in the past so it didn't even cross my mind.

Thanks.

[orangecat]

11 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

@Eigenvektor made a salient point about the sata.  If you only checked a few the others might be working.  I was really hoping to get models there so I could get some idea of the age of the machine.  The existence of an optical drive means more than a year or two generally.  It’s still possible to put 5 1/4” floppies on new machines though if you can get the right adaptors (Haswell was 2014 btw)

Turns out having a m.2 drive in disables some of the SATA ports. I had no idea this was the issue because I didn't try all the ports nor did I read the manual to see what ports get disabled.

[Bombastinator]

41 minutes ago, bigPPchad said:

By the way you were right. Some of the SATA ports were disabled. I had the drives plugged into 5/6 and they are disabled. However I also used 3/4 and it didn't work but 1/2 do. I'm guessing it has something to do with having that pci-e wifi card in as well. Maybe it disables other SATA ports. I was 100% sure I used 4/5 and checked the BIOS and saw nothing. Maybe I need my eyes checked or maybe they don't work. Either way I'm not going to waste my time checking at this point since I know 1/2 are working. Also maybe I should have known better also. I've always built myself higher end systems and never had this be an issue however my grandmas PC was built on a budget and I picked up a b450 board on the cheap not thinking that some SATA ports may be disabled when some pcie devices are used. I never had this happen to me in the past so it didn't even cross my mind.

Thanks.

An explanation of the behavior which may not interest you:

Spoiler

It’s an issue with limited bandwidth between the chipset and the cpu.  or even just economies of chips.  Sometimes only the top slot goes directly to the cpu and everything else goes through the chipset.  It’s only got the equivelant of about 4 pcie lanes generally, and then there are other economies which can reduce things further.  With xenon or threadripper chips there are usually lots of lanes to go around, but general consumer grade chips only get 20.  So if 16 go to the top slot everything else generally shares the other 4 through the chipset.  The 5600g has even bigger problems for gaming.  It’s split 8 and 8, so the top slot graphics card can only be so powerful before it starts running into trouble.