Western Digital HDD SATA ( WD3200AAKS ) not being recognized on XPS 720!!!???

Which SATA port is the internal drive connected to? It should be connected to SATA port 2. Boot drive is on port 0, second hard drive on port 2. Then you have to enter the bios (setup F2 at boot) and turn on SATA port 2 and save the settings. Bios should recognize it then.

thank you for reading and replying to my post ...

But ... the hard drive is on SATA drive 2 ( or port 2 ), the boot is on drive 0 ( or port 0 ) .. my bios recognized the HD, but in windows XP, I don't see it in the disk management ( from  the Control Panel --> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management--> Disk Management ) ... so I cannot format it ...

any suggestions ???

thank you

What is your BIOS set to on the port that has the new drive?  It should be Auto, Enabled, or sometimes I've seen On.  If the BIOS is properly reporting its information to the BIOS Windows should be able to see it and give you a disk number in the lower right of the Disk Management window.  It won't do that, however, if the SATA port has not been enabled.

Does your BIOS have settings for RAID On for individual drives?  This setting usually applies only to the controller, but the documentation for the XPS 720 seems to say that you can set that parameter for each drive.  What is your boot drive set to?  Perhaps the second drive needs to be set the same way.

Thks Jack for replying ...   OK .. let me resume what is : ( or what I know from what I've seen & done )

On the setup ( by pressing F2 from the start of boot ) I have and seen :

My Seagate HD is 500 Go is on SATA-0

My DVD is on SATA-1

My WD HD in question is on SATA-2

I have another Seagate HD on SATA-3

and on SATA-4, I have another DVD drive

SMART error repporting is ON

RAID is OFF

BOOT is done first on the DVD SATA-1, and second  on SATA-0

Everything seem to be OK in the setup !

It is in my Windows XP  that the SATA-2 does not show up ( the WD 320 Go does not show up at all - no where ..) I even tried to go through the Add Hardware Wizard to add the WD HD ... but nope ... it does not notice it at all ... I have done it manually ... no luck either !

From the Western Digital website, I have seen & read similar problems with WD disk, and it was advised that the OS installed is supposed to see it, and if it does not see it, to check with My PC manufacturer and make sure that the

mass storage controller drivers are installed & updated .... it seems, from scans that I have done, that all my drivers have been updated for my XPS 720 ...  

"mass storage controller drivers that comes with the controller card or motherboard" :  that term is a bit confusing, because I don't see any drivers in my system referring to this item that way !!?? .. and that is what I specifically cannot confirm, they have advised me that it is supposed to be provided by the  controller manufacturer   (or motherboard manufacturer).

Any assisstance with this will be greatly appreciated.

Further steps that I have taken : I booted my system using a Linux live CD, The linux distro can see it ( the latest UBUNTU ) but the linux system cannot read nor write nor format it for installation .. ...

any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

thank you

Don

Have you tried exchanging ports with the WD and the second (non-booting) Seagate you have?  My guess on this is that there is something in the sectors that normally hold the master boot record that is causing the problem.  Can you use the Linux disk to partition the drive?  Re-write the Master Boot Record?

I'm afraid I don't know for certain, but I have observed over the years that some owners who zero out their hard drive in preparation for sale wind up with hard drives that the Windows XP setup program will not recognize.  I've never done an experiment to verify, but in those cases going back to FDISK and using it to re-write the MBR seemed to help.