Inspiron 7000 Gaming (7567) - Problem adding 2nd hard drive

On the Seagate that is working in the BIOS, do you know what it's formatted as? That's the only thing I can think of... Also, on the Crucial drive was it ever formatted or fresh too? Sorry on the silly questions, but this is pretty interesting since the Seagate is working.. This is out of scope, but I will see if I can find anything that helps. 

Best regards,

Brad 

Good questions.  

Seagate is NTFS formatted, MBR partition table

Crucial is NTFS formatted, GPT partition table

Intel is blank - I put it through a diskpart CLEAN first before putting it in the 7567

I should at least be able to see that something is connected even if it's in an unreadable format.  The Intel SSD should have shown up with no format in diskpart, and easily partitioned and formatted.

I agree with you that they should be showing up (which is really odd....), but do you have a way to format one of the SSD's to MBR? I am honestly not sure why the GPT or blank drive is not working though... 

I will still see if I find anything on my end. 

Best regards,

Brad

Sure, see the transcript below of formatting the Intel SSD.  After performing this, I put it back in the 7567 and it does not show up in BIOS or Windows.  Screenshots below.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.15063.0

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.

On computer: TMCMURRY3420

DISKPART> list disk

 Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
 
--------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
 D
isk 0    Online          119 GB      0 B        *
 
Disk 1    Online          335 GB   335 GB        *

DISKPART> select disk 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> list disk

 Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
 
--------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
 
Disk 0    Online          119 GB      0 B        *
* Disk 1    Online          335 GB   335 GB

DISKPART> create partition primary

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> format fs=ntfs quick label=spare

 100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> assign letter=y

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
 
----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
 
Volume 0     D                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
 
Volume 1     C                NTFS   Partition    118 GB  Healthy    Boot
 
Volume 2         Recovery     NTFS   Partition    450 MB  Healthy    Hidden
 
Volume 3                      FAT32  Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
* Volume 4     Y   spare        NTFS   Partition    335 GB  Healthy

View from BIOS

View from Windows

Thanks for the update, I know this will probably cause Windows to not boot (while enabled), but can you change from AHCI to RAID in the BIOS and then restart to see if the 2nd drive is found in the BIOS?

I am including the Diskpart listing from my system with a 250 GB data 2.5 inch drive and a 500 GB Samsung 960 EV0 M.2 PCIE drive.  I will be back in about 12 hours to see if I can help.

We did have one thread where someone with an older SSD had to replace it with a newer one.  I do not know your situation regarding the SSD you are using, but some of the size numbers look a little strange.. Maybe BitLocker is involved in that.

DISKPART> lis dis

 Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt

 --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---

 Disk 0    Online          238 GB      0 B        *

 Disk 1    Online          465 GB      0 B        *

This is a very strange case, and like the OP I have never seen the type of physical storage medium make a difference as to whether the drive is detected at all at the BIOS level.  Just to gather another data point in addition to Brad's suggestion, what happens if you physically remove the NVMe SSD?  Does that allow the BIOS to detect the SATA SSDs?

Thanks for the good questions.  Here's what I've put together.  First, acknowledging a mistake. If we go back to the above picture, the "Primary Hard Drive" attribute is the Intel SATA SSD's serial number "CVTS535500D1360KGN."  When I removed it, the PHD attribute said (none).  When I connected the Crucial the PHD attribute changed to "13280944E1E9."  In all cases BIOS is seeing the drive.

This appears to be an honest mistake on my part; I misread what was on the screen, interpreting the "Primary Hard Drive" as the serial number of the NVMe disk, when it's reporting the serial number of the attached SATA drive instead.  It is confusing.  I would have thought the attribute would report the SATA drive model number instead.  The PCIe attribute is also the serial number of the NVMe drive.  

If I could be so bold as to suggest correcting that in a future BIOS update to make it more clear and report both attributes, the model & serial, per connector.

At Brad-L's suggestion I put the Intel controller back in "RAID On" mode.  Prior to this, I had made the steps to install the correct RAID & AHCI drivers, knowing this was a likely path of troubleshooting.

After switching back to RAID On, Windows booted normally, the NVMe disk name changed, and the Toshiba storage controller driver was replaced with the Intel Raid Controller.  Note the empty SATA Connector on the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Manager. 

Interestingly, for about ~60 seconds, the Intel SATA SSD appeared in the device manager.  I attempted to take a picture, but I was too slow to take a photo, it disappeared.  I went to the event viewer and the it reported failure to communicate with device and errored out, the disk was dropped by Windows.  

So to eliminate whether or not it's just my Windows installation or something else - I made a bootable Windows 10 1703 USB installer.  I disabled Secure Boot so I could boot from the USB stick.  Taking JPHUGHAN's advice, I removed the NVMe drive, left Intel SATA mode is RAID On, leaving only the Intel SSD is installed.  When I get to the drive selection list, it's empty, so I chose the "Load Driver" option, loaded the boot driver for the Intel Controller, it detected correctly, however the SSD drive is not detected.  Reboot, start over again with the Crucial drive, same result. I didn't photo the Crucial results for brevity.

For completeness' sake, I swap the SSD for the HDD and attempt to install Win10 again with the same process EXCEPT I do NOT load the Intel RAID driver and I get this:

As this test reveals, I didn't need to install the Intel RAID in the first place, but I did so anyway since no drives were listed - and I had no way to know whether or not the driver was loaded simply by looking at an empty device selection list. I'm going to test installation of Windows to the HDD to eliminate the disappearing act the SSDs have. 

SO - Windows can't see (use?) SSD drives in the SATA slot during installation or during normal Windows operation.

I'll post this message as it's long already and follow up with what happens when I go back to AHCI mode.

Switched back to AHCI mode.  Installed the Intel SSD, left the NVMe drive disconnected.  Reproduced the problem exactly as described earlier, but I caught the drive disappearing.

Boot to Win10 1703 installer, windows sees the SSD.

I SHIFT+F10 to open the command prompt, run diskpart to show the drive, make sure it's reporting correctly.  It appears to do so. Then I issue a "rescan" command and relist the drive.  It has disappeared.

I refresh the windows installer drive selection window, and the drive is now gone.  I brought the command prompt back in front.

Saltgrass,

Hey thank you for the reply.  Like you, I have an understanding of UEFI, Secure Boot, SATA, M.2 (NVMe), AHCI, and "Raid" (according to Intel) and the relationship between those technologies and successful use of them in concert with all of the available options.

Addressing your points.  There has never been an external drive in use in any parts of discovering the issue, or in diagnosing it either.  The issue is with the Internal SATA port on the motherboard.  

I had already installed the appropriate drivers via the Safe Boot method you describe and have been safely able to switch between AHCI & RAID modes arbitrarily for some time now without having to go back into Safe Mode.  Once I make the switch in BIOS, Windows "just boots" and otherwise operates normally with the NVMe drive.  

Changing the AHCI/RAID mode was meant to figure out what's going on with the SATA port.  The original issue is the SATA port only sees HDD type SATA drives, not SSD type SATA drives.

By testing thoroughly, I've eliminated the M.2 NVMe drive as a cause for problems as I can successfully reproduce the inability for the SATA port to work when only a SATA device is connected.  

I successfully installed Win10 onto the SATA HDD while the Win10 installer can't see the SATA SSD.  The point of testing installation of Windows to HDD was to eliminate an issue where my existing Win10 installation on the NVMe could be causing the problem - i.e. "Start Fresh to see if problems persist".  Turns out the issues manifest far before a normal Windows installation has occurred.

I'm able to reinsert only the NVMe drive and boot Windows without issue at any time.  It has performed an exemplary job the entire time.  I've never changed UEFI/Legacy boot modes, it has been UEFI the entire time.  

As I've typed this, Windows 10 just finished installing on the HDD with the NVMe drive disconnected.  The problem is clearly how the SATA port handles SSDs.  There aren't any other variables I am aware of to check.  I've eliminated the last variable:  does the SATA port work at all?  It does, but only with HDDs.

Here's a quick matrix of the testing and results:

Here's Win10 running on the 7567 on the HDD:

One thing to remember, do not change the controller on a bootable drive without going through the special procedure using msconfig.exe to set the system to boot into Safe Mode after your change the setting in the Bios.

You seem to have gone down a Rabbit hole and hard for me to follow where you are.  Do you currently have a system booting to the PCIe NVMe drive in Secure Boot mode?  The external drive should not even be attached during this process.

Changing from RAID to AHCI changes the controller for both drives but the big difference is it allows the M.2 slot to function as PCIe.  The system, in order to boot a PCIe drive, has to use the UEFI boot configuration.

I would ask, you try to get the system back to a normal state.  If the SSD is capable of running it will be seen normally.  If it is not, you may not be able to get it installed but it should be seen when connected to the SATA cable in either RAID or AHCI since they are both SATA controllers.  

Thanks for the further updates and replies on this. Can you Private Message me your Service Tag? Or has anything changed since then?

Also, saltgrass, on your system w/ the two SSDs, was this on your 7567?

Best regards,

Brad

Yes Brad, the 7567.  I had already installed the M.2 drive as PCIe and installed the SSD when someone had a problem, which they had because of an older SSD they were trying to use.

My SSD was clean when I added it so no situations about a controller change.

I am running Bios version 1.00.07 but just upgraded to 1.1.0 which does not appear to effect the SSD install.

I'm actually on 1.1.0 , release date 8/17/2017 (according to SMBIOS).  Brad, I've PMed you the requested information.  Thanks everyone!