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HDD Replacing DVD Bay Not Recognised By Windows
I have a 7737 with the 256 Gb SSD, but I wanted more storage internally and wasn't too fussed about having DVD - so I bought a caddy and replaced the optical drive with a WD Scorpio Black 750 Gb drive.
When I first went into Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management, it recognised that the drive was there as it told me it needed initialising - so I went ahead and let it. The disk promptly disappeared from the list, and nothing I can do can get it back.
I tried refresh, rescan disk drives, reboot (at which point I can confirm the BIOS recognises the drive correctly, as the 'SATA ODD', but still Windows refuses to acknowledge that it is there. Device Manager only shows the SSD and scanning for hardware changes has no effect.
It could be coincidence, but now my laptop seems a touch sluggish, particularly in the graphics... and I noticed that in the Task Manager, System Interrupts is now taking 10% CPU time on average. I can't say I've ever noticed this before. My old Samsung laptop (which has integrated graphics rather than a dedicated card, to be fair) claims System Interrupts is taking no CPU time at all. This seems to suggest there's a conflict of some sort and maybe that's why the drive isn't recognised?
Since Device Manager doesn't see it, I can't check for updated drivers.
Since Disk Management doesn't see it, I can't format it / partition it / assign a drive letter to it.
The BIOS doesn't seem to let me do anything with the drive, such as go into properties or disable / re-enable it, or anything like that.
Can anyone suggest what I might have missed in the setup, or what I can do to fix this?
Thanks in advance.
osprey4
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April 29th, 2014 16:00
Unfortunately, I can't find a downloadable diagnostic for your laptop. Try Seatools. The Seagate site has a download you can use to create a bootable CD or flash drive for testing hard drives.
I just want to see if a tool outside of Windows can detect the drive and any problems.
osprey4
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April 27th, 2014 12:00
Hi jteagle1969,
I would download the Dell diagnostics and put it on a bootable flash drive, then boot to the flash drive and see if you can run the diagnostics on the HDD.
JTeagle1969
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April 27th, 2014 13:00
Thank you Osprey - I'll give that a try.
JTeagle1969
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April 29th, 2014 01:00
Osprey, any chance you could point me towards a downloadable version of the diagnostics? I could only find the online version, and that only seems to check the SSD.
Eventually, after putting the laptop to sleep and coming back the following morning, Rapid Storage suddenly told me the drive was there. Disk Management agreed - but of course it was now a drive with no partition. So I tried to add a simple volume, including a quick format, and... it disappeared again. I waited 7 or 8 hours in case it just took a long time for some reason, but still my machine remained even more sluggish, and no drive reappeared. I have since rebooted the laptop and it isn't there...
JTeagle1969
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April 29th, 2014 23:00
No problem, I have found the Western Digital diagnostic tools. I have had to remove the drive as it was continuing to drag my laptop down. Everything has gone back to normal on the machine. I'll get a caddy to let me use it as an external drive via USB 3, and we'll see what happens then.
Thanks for your help.
JTeagle1969
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May 2nd, 2014 06:00
I didn't even need the diagnostic tool; I got a caddy and plugged the drive in as an external, and it added a volume and quick formatted in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately this implies that it is the Dell motherboard that is fouling up. This is a standard SATA connector, so any SATA-compatible device should work - that's what drivers are for. I'm not happy about this, but luckily the caddy for this disk is nice and small so it is easily portable - the whole reason I wanted this as internal storage in the first place.