How to enable the SATA ports on a Dell XPS 8300?

Surpried no one answewred....
I´m having the same issue

Were you able to figure it out?

No offense, but can we assume you connected both a power cable and a SATA cable to the new HDD?

The boot hard drive is connected to SATA0 (not SATA1).

If you open BIOS setup, you should see a list of SATA ports, SATA0, SATA1, SATA2, SATA3. If you select any one of them in that list, you should see the drive that's connected to it. Check if the new HDD is correctly recognized on whichever SATA port it's connected to.

If you don't see the new HDD on that SATA port, try swapping the SATA cable for the one connected to the DVD drive, which presumably works, and see if the new HDD is recognized on that port.

You will have to format the new HDD before it's usable...

Hello

Even when my problem is similar it´s not about a HHD but a secondary DVD ROM
I conected it to SATA3 (yes it has the SATA and power conections)

the computer does not recognize it.

In the BIOS the port is disabled (and grayed out)
It´s imposible to access it in any way inside the BIOS

What do I have to do to enable it?

• What version of BIOS is running?
• What CPU?
• What Intel chipset, eg Sandy Bridge P67 or H67? You can use free CPU-Z to find out.
• Is old DVD on SATA1 or SATA2?
• Have you tried swapping the SATA cables between the two DVD drives? That should at least tell you if the new drive works...

You can try this:

1. Run BIOS setup and copy down all current settings
2. Power off, unplug
3. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec
4. With new drive connected to SATA2*, remove motherboard battery
5. Press/hold power button for ~30 sec
6. Reinstall battery
7. Close case and reboot with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected
8. See if that SATA port is enabled now

*HDD is on SATA0, existing DVD on SATA1