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XPS 8930, BIOS does not see new HDD
Just installed a Western Digital 6 TB drive in a XPS 8930 to use as a data hard drive. Windows Disk Manager and the BIOS/UEFI do not see the drive.
I read somewhere else online I may have to configure ports or something like that for the machine to recognize the drive. Any ideas on how to get the machine to see this hard drive? There's nothing in the BIOS that seems intuitive to make it happen.
I'm baffled. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
(My operating system and apps are on the SSD. This HDD will be the only hard disk drive on the machine.)
Mainz Moonbase
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February 11th, 2019 20:00
By the way, the BIOS is set to SATA Operation: RAID on.
Tesla1856
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February 11th, 2019 21:00
That is your first problem that must be corrected.
Are you sure both cables (power AND data) are connected and good?
Maybe try in different machine or a USB enclosure/tester.
With UEFI-BIOS and Windows-10/64bit it should work. Later, you initialize as GPT and format as NTFS.
Mainz Moonbase
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February 12th, 2019 08:00
Thanks for the advice. I checked the machine one final time this morning and the drive was recognized by the BIOS and disk management utility. I have no idea what changed, but it continues to work after several reboots. Wierd stuff.
Thanks for your help! I appreciate it very much.
Vic384
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February 12th, 2019 12:00
I do not believe there is an option in the XPS 8930 BIOS to turn on a SATA port. As far as I can tell the SATA ports are always on.
Mary G
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February 12th, 2019 12:00
Windows will not see the drive until it is formatted. Bios won't see it unless the SATA port that it is connected to is turned on in the bios. F2 at startup to get to Setup which is the bios.
themayneman
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August 17th, 2020 07:00
Same PC here, same 6TB hdd and same problem! Please can anyone tell me what to do as I'm lost. The hdd is spinning and when I swap it for a different (smaller) drive everything works fine, so obviously power and data leads are okay. My PC is about 2 weeks old and the hard-drive in question is brand new. Any help or suggestions will be much appreciated Thanks for reading this.
Vic384
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August 17th, 2020 08:00
The SATA power cable and SATA data cable may be good but it is possible that the SATA data cable is not making good contact with the connector on the hard drive. If you hear the hard drive spin up the power cable is probably making contact but I would check the data cable. If the hard drive is mounted in one of the bottom drive cages, leave the side panel off and check the cable. If you don't have a right-angle SATA connector where the SATA data cable connects to the hard drive, the side panel sometimes interferes with a straight SATA connector.
Ched57
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September 26th, 2021 19:00
When I talked to tech support, they told me I could only go up to 4 TB for another drive and no higher. Not sure if it's a BIOS or MoBo issue. (I have the 8930 as well)