Issue adding drives to SATA 5/6

Hi Bumpydog99.

what about Device Manager? do they show up there? if not scan for changed Configuration (Device Manager > Right Click).

Meant to say, these are Mediamax (WD) drives and the BIOS identifies them as WL5000GSA12872

I had already tried that and, no, they do not show up there either. All I see is my 1TB SSD and ST2000DX001 2TB HDD (which are SATA ports 3 and 4 respectively - SATA 1 and 2 are optical drives). All of these devices show up in the BIOS at startup (plus, of course, my two 'missing' drives in SATA 5/6)

what SSD Model is it exactly?

are SATA 5 and 6 on the Motherbord also the SATA Express Ports?

do you have Hard Disk Menu in the BIOS Settings where you can Enable / Disable Drives? maybe you have to activate them first.

My SSD is a Sandisk Ultra 960GB. I'm running BIOS A11 and I can see no way of individually enabling or disabling SATA ports. I have no idea whether SATA 5/6 are Express ports or not. I might try swapping ports 1/2 with 5/6 to see what (if anything) happens. One thing I have noticed, which could have some bearing, is that, after a cold boot, the machine seems to hang at the point where the blue window is on the screen and the 'circle of rotating dots' stay like that indefinitely. If I force a power down and restart, it boots up fine (although it can't see the additional SATA drives).

OK, just checked further into the BIOS and the boot mode is set to Legacy!! I plan to now backup the SSD and reconfigure it as UEFI and restore it and see where we go from there.

Thanks to both of you for taking the trouble to reply.

*3 - 6 aren't SATA Express ports

I might check that the Bios is set to UEFI. I don't have experience with drives larger than 2Tb, but I have formatted drives to GPT using DiskPart in a Command Prompt. I wouldn't try this until you're sure it is acceptable or appropriate to do; note that List Disk can tell you what format the drive is currently in ...

"Master boot record (MBR) disks use the standard BIOS partition table. GUID partition table (GPT) disks use unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI). One advantage of GPT disks is that you can have more than four partitions on each disk. GPT is also required for disks larger than 2 terabytes. You can change a disk from MBR to GPT partition style as long as the disk does not contain any partitions or volumes.

See also:

1. Convert MBR to GPT using Diskpart

This method you have to backup all your data and delete all partitions and volumes. Then use the DISKPART command.

• Open command prompt and type in DISKPART and press Enter
• Then type in list disk  (Note down the number of the disk that you want to convert to GPT)
• Then type in select disk number of disk
• Finally, type in convert gpt

It is true that the middle and bottom SATA data ports 3 4 5 6 are the boot ports (top two for DVDs etc). I might switch my new drives into ports 3 and 4, switch the working drives into 5 and 6 and recheck. Or, remove all drives accept the working drive with your OS, then insert a 5Tb drive, example > OS drive into port 3, new 5Tb into 4 then 5 then 6 then 3 if that's what it takes to test

* for laughs & giggles, try them in ports 1 &  2 by disconnecting the data cables and moving them up a row, see what happens

The closest result I got for a large drive was this post, which had advice but was unresolved, therefore this post and the one linked may be of no help today, sorry if that is the case or you already knew all of this info > Area 51 Factory Reset Windows 7, Upgrade to 10 - Cannot Find All 6TB Drive Space

okay. try to swap the Ports and then we will see.

On some machines (generally) SATA-5/6 are reserved for Optical drives. Sometimes the BIOS has an option about it.

There is only 4 HDD bays anyway. Can you limit HDD/SSD to SATA-1/4, and use 5/6 for opticals?

Size 4gb might be limit for drives on Aurora-R4 ... even though it's not suppose to matter if the larger drives aren't bootable. Sometimes, HDD maker has translation software to work-around BIOS glitches.

White 1 2 for non-boot / optical drives >< black 3 - 6 for boot drives

One further thing, before I start moving my SATA ports around and reconfigure my boot disk to GPT - Is my system disk being MBR and my Boot Mode being Legacy going to stop the two new drives being seen at all (or should they be seen, but at a smaller capacity etc)?

Getting nowhere with this.  I removed one drive and connected it to the system via a USB 3.0 adapter and it came up under Disk Management (as Disk 2/Unknown/ Not initialized) but could not be formatted as GPT (or MBR) with 'the specified disk is not convertible because the size is less than the minimum size required for GPT disks'.  I have Acronis True Image 2017 and Easus Partition Manager Pro, but neither of these apps see the drives either, yet the BIOS tells me they are installed.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

P.S. Diskpart also fails to recognise them as being installed.

so even connected via USB the Drive can not be initialized?

may i ask where the two Drives came from? are they new or used?

i have an old AMD PC at Home running in Legacy Mode. i'm using it as NAS Server. i have 1 x 8 TB Seagate and 1 x 6 TB WD Drives installed. as soon as you connect the Drive Windows should ask you if you want to initialize the HDD. usually it happens everytime you open Windows Disk Management as well until you finally decide what to do.

i am familiar with EaseUS Partition Master Software. i am using it myself. it should show all connected Drives even if they are not initialized.

maybe you have to update the HDD Firmware first? google your HDD Model + Firmware and see what you can find.

The drives are both brand new and were in sealed anti-static bags. The drives are Mediamax 5TB SATA (which I understand are WD drives) and both exhibit the same characteristics when installed as either SATA or via USB 3.0 (or 2.0). Googling that part/model number doesn't bring up any hits for firmware. Maybe I should just send them back? :-(

when the HDD is connected via USB, does it show an Error Code in Device Manager?

have you tried to connect the HDD to another System via USB? if yes, does Disk Management show the same?

wait for other Opinions before you send the HDDs back. maybe someone else has an Idea.