Alienware 17, Can't see secondary HDD in Windows

You can try the following:

In the windows search box, look for disk management.

Over the grey out disk unite do a right click and select mount disk, that should make the unit been recognize by windows.

 Let me know if this helps you.  

Unfortunately, that didn't work either. The HDD isn't even showing up in Disk Management. It's really confusing to me how it shows in the BIOS but nowhere in the OS...

Try the following:

-  Enter into the BIOS.

-  Go to the boot tap and disable secure boot.

-   Enable the legacy option.

-   Save changes and restart the system.

Let know if those steps help you fixing the issue. 

Unfortunately, this didn't work either. I can boot without secure boot without a problem, but enabling the legacy option causes the system to not even boot. I even tried going into the boot menu and booting directly from the SSD and it wouldn't let me. UEFI apparently has to be enabled in order for Windows 8 to boot on this system...

This may seem like a stretch, but do you see the HDD in device manager with a caution sign or something under "Disk drives"?

A bit odd that enabling legacy prevents booting. It may be due to how the SSD was formatted, but I'm not sure.

Only the SSD is shown in the device manager.

There's only three things to check, then (from what I can come up with).

1. System restore to the day before this happened. Wouldn't be surprised if there was an error with Windows itself rather than the computer.

2. Reflash the A02/A00 (or both) BIOS.

3. Check to see if the HDD is detectab;e on another computer or as an external hard drive.

1. I system restored back to the day I got the computer and that didn't work.

2. I just reflashed A02 as well. No dice.

3. I don't have a way to do this at this time but I'll definitely have to give it a shot ASAP. Will that void my warranty, though? I'm gonna need to read up on that before I dive right in, haha.

Thanks for taking the time to stop in and try to help, by the way. This issue has been such a headache for me..

No warranty would be voided.

If it isn't a Windows issue, I would suspect there may be a problem with the SATA port. Just a guess. My only conclusion for that is the AW13 is affected by the same thing but with certain branded 2.5" SSDs . There are some differences, but the situation is similar enough.

Flash and update your BIOS. If did that, re-flash your BIOS again and this should solve the problem. You can find the BIOS through downloads section in your device support page.

Cheers

Did you ever figure this out btw?  I'm in pretty much the same situation, same computer, same problem.  This happened before, but I believe a system restore fixed it last time.  No luck this time though.

I've been trying everything suggested and nothing has been able to fix the problem... I'm assuming I'm gonna have to buy a new HDD and see if that's what the problem is. Kinda crazy that multiple people are having the same exact issue with the same laptop though..

Edit: Sorry for such a late response. I've been away from the internet for a bit due to work.

same as LuperAZ randomly appears every restart