Hard drive not recognized in BIOS

#1 Thorpedo91

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Posted 10 January 2010 - 10:20 PM

I just bought a new Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA drive to replace my dads old Samsung 400GB SATA drive. I am replacing the samsung because of an irrepairable clicking noise and very slow loading times, especially when booting up windows. I installed this new WD drive using the same cable as the old samsung, but the computer, even in BIOS, fails to notice their is a drive present. I have tried reconnecting many times, and switching the samsung back in a couple times. The samsung is always recognized immediately. I also installed this WD drive on my personal computer, and it was instantly recognized. So I am not sure why my Dad's computer will not recognize the WD hardrive. Thank You.

#2 pcxcsc

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Posted 10 January 2010 - 11:53 PM

The bios setup may have settings for hard drive recognition &/or configuration some models may have ide / sata / both options or a raid / (?) something else...option, I have seen some pc's that wouldn't see certain sata drives unless in raid configuration...hope that helps

#3 Sneakycyber

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Posted 11 January 2010 - 12:13 AM

What kind of computer are we working with here?

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#4 fairjoeblue

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Posted 11 January 2010 - 12:43 AM

If the computer is old enough to have a motherboard with the original SATA 1.) [1.5 GB/s] & the new HD is SATA2 3.0 [3.0 GB/s] the motherboard will not recognize the newer drive as it came

If you go to the new HD manufacturers web site & get the manual for it there is probably a jumper on the back that can be set to make it compatible.

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#5 Thorpedo91

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Posted 11 January 2010 - 03:04 AM

this was a home built pc by a friend. I know some of the parts were used, and my dad got this pc 4 years ago. So all parts are at least that old if not older. looking at the old samsung drive, i see that it has the jumper in the correct spot to be downgraded from 3.0 gb to 1.5 gb. so im assuming that is the problem. Can i simply pull the jumper out of the samsung, and put it in the correct place for the WD?

#6 Sneakycyber

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Posted 11 January 2010 - 09:17 AM

Correct. The reason your dads computer can't see the newer drive is because its a SATA II drive if you use the jumper to force it to SATA I the older computer will recognize it. The Chip sets that are effected by this are the Mostly made by VIA Chipsets known to have this fault include the VIA VT8237 and VT8237R southbridges, and the VIA VT6420, VT6421A and VT6421L standalone SATA controllers. There are a few made by SIS that are effected as well.

Reference: Wikipedia SATA