When BIOS and so on is not seeing drives, it sounds like time to replace the size 2032 motherboard battery.

I recently went thru a complex due to a bad battery.  Windows kept giving me BSOD (for short).  Yet, with a good battery, it wouldn't have been doing that.  I couldn't reload the SSD.  Sometimes it would see it, sometimes not, and only get as far as 1% regardless.  Once battery was replaced, reload went smoothly.  Had to finish reload since I already started it.

1TB SSD certainly isn't an issue.  Check out the Precision 7920 Tech Guide.pdf.

It sounds like your drives are connecting to a PCIe storage controller, such as LSI Broadcom Mega Raid.  If this is the case, your BIOS will not see or detect anything that is not connecting to the motherboard SATA ports.  Same thing with driver(s), it would detect drives connecting to the Intel SATA controller via SATA ports.

When using add-on controller, access the interface at boot to configure your drive(s).  

If you are connecting your drives to motherboard SATA ports, disregard this info and check if your SATA operation mode is enabled with AHCI.

@bradthetechnut​ Thank you for the hint! The battery was indeed close to replacement voltage, but changing it has not solved my issue, unfortunately.

@Chino de Oro​ Thank you for your answer! It contains quite a few nuggets of information about what might be wrong (I have never dealt with an intermediary storage controller, for example).

It is highly likely a problem with the storage controller. Playing with UEFI, secure boot and AHCI settings eventually made the other HDDs (which used to work) go undetected as well. Maybe even a loose cable could cause this issue. I will disassemble the PC to see what controller it has, whether it has device drivers I can load before installing Windows, or whether it is possible to directly connect to the motherboard.

The compatibility issue might indeed be related to the SSD model and workstation. To resolve this, try finding the specific SSD driver for your workstation model. If such a driver isn't available, the SSD might not be supported. Ensure BIOS settings like AHCI are correctly configured. If the problem persists, contact Dell suppor

Hello,

We have a Precision 7920 workstation with two HDDs occupying 2 of the 4 front slots. To improve the terrible speed, we decided to try replacing one of them with a Kingston KC600 1TB SATA SSD. It comes with an external case, so I can connect it externally via USB and use the SATA interface. I formatted it to NTFS.

I ran the Dell Scan that installed all the most recent drivers. 

I can see the SSD when connecting via USB to other Dell PCs and my laptop. But this specific workstation does not recognize it at all: it does not show up in Device Manager, and the Kingston SSD Manager does not find it. When installed (i.e. connecting with SATA), it similarly does not show up anywhere, not even in BIOS. But weirdly, the BIOS shows that all the SATA slots are empty (even those occupied with the functioning HDDs), except for one slot, occupied by the ODD (DVD reader). So I cannot check if the BIOS recognizes the SSD, as it does not recognize any of the installed hard drives. I have not tried yet to install the SSD in other Dell computers (not sure if they are workstations or PCs).

When trying to install the Windows image acquired from Dell for this model and the specific service tag, I get as far as selecting the partition to install Windows to. The partitions of the other HDD show up, but the SSD does not appear. I tried downloading and extracting the following drivers on the Windows USB stick, but they were not recognized as proper device drivers: 

• Enterprise F6-Treiber für Intel Rapid Storage Technology (Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-enterprise-F6-Driver_VWP4G_WIN_5.2.0.1215_A01.EXE)
• Intel Virtual RAID on CPU Driver (Intel-Virtual-RAID-on-CPU-Driver_C5DGP_WIN_7.8.0.1031_A15_01.EXE)

I purchased a brand-new Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD, hoping to boost performance. However, upon installation, I encountered a perplexing problem. The BIOS fails to recognize the SSD in any of the M.2 slots, and it doesn't show up in Device Manager either. I've tried updating drivers and even checked the SSD on another Dell machine where it worked perfectly. It's quite frustrating as I'm unable to take advantage of the enhanced speed this SSD could offer.