HD's Not Showing

[thom]

Two of my three HD's are not showing. I have installed the OS on my C drive which is visible. Could this be a wrong setting in the BIOS? I have the same SATA cord powering 2 of the HD's. One SATA connector at the end of the cord goes to 1 HD and the SATA connector in the middle of the cord goes to another HD. Is that a problem?

[glc]

They have to be partitioned and formatted before they will be "seen". You do that in Disk Management.

There's a sticky thread about this in the Drives forum, by the way - I'd like to ask you to take a bit of time and search for answers to your questions before asking them. You learn better that way. Thanks!

[thom]

I am totally stuck and do not know what to try. I finished my build and went into the BIOS and set the boot sequence. Put the OS in the CD and installed Win7. Before the Win boot I received a blue screen that said a problem had been detected and Win was shutting down to protect the computer. It further stated that if this was the 1st time see this screen, I should select the option to repair the problem, which I did and then Win booted ok. Computer was powered on, sitting idle. After 15 minutes or so, the computer turned off on it's own. I left it off for the night and the next morning was able to boot to Win. Now the computer will not boot and I get the same blue screen error message as before. So I am not sure if I have a BIOS issue or I should just try to reinstall windows. I have done some research but cannot find an answer.

I was able to restore computer to a previous state and Win will now boot.

[thom]

Please see my above post. Each time I boot to Win7, I am getting a windows error message and I must restore the computer to a previous state before Win will boot.

[nicolaus corelius]

did you put any drivers?

[thom]

No, I thought the necessary drivers were already in the OS. Wrong?

[glc]

Wrong. That's why the motherboard and your other components come with a support CD/DVD. Please post your specs.

[thom]

ASUS P7P55D LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel

Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80605I7860

(2 Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives

(1)Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL8D-4GBHK

(2)LITE-ON Black 24X DVD Writer Black SATA Model iHAS-324-98

Koutech IO-FPM421 5-in-1 USB 2.0 Card Reader

Antec Sonata III 500

[glc]

1. Are ALL the drives connected to the Intel ICH controller? There's also a JMB controller in there, I recommend you do NOT use it unless you have an IDE device and/or a eSATA device, the JMB should be disabled in the bios if you aren't using it.
2. Is the ICH set to AHCI, IDE, or RAID in the bios?

If this terminology is Greek to you, I recommend you re-read your motherboard manual.

[thom]

I will read my manual in depth. All three SATA HD's and DVD burners are connected to SATA ports on the MOBO. My HD's are in the Enhanced, IDE mode in the BIOS.

[glc]

IDE mode should be stable. The question is, exactly WHICH SATA ports are you using? I recommend you start with the lowest number ports - hard drives first, then opticals. As I remember, the highest number port is on the JMB, do not use it unless you have to.

You COULD try using AHCI, but that WILL require a Windows reinstall.

[thom]

I am going to disconnect and reconnect all HD's and Optical drives in the order that you suggest. Initially I randomly connected them. On my MOBO the JMB is indicated with a -1 and I am not using it.

[thom]

I suspect that my HD's are not formatted. I am able to boot into windows using the system disk. Looking at my computer I only see the 2 optical drives and C drive. When I go to disk manager I get a screen that says "mmc cannot initialize because the mmc installation or a portion of the registry is corrupted. you can attempt to fix the problem using the following command: regsr32
%systemroot%\system32\mmcndmgr.dll

[glc]

Boot it up with a Western Digital Diagnostics CD or some other zero fill utility. Zero fill all 3 drives. Then set the ICH controller to AHCI.

Disconnect all 3 hard drives AND your card reader, then reconnect only ONE of the hard drives. Boot it up with the Windows 7 DVD and install it.

When Windows 7 is installed and updated, and all drivers are installed, then reconnect the other 2 drives and partition/format them in Disk Management. Then reconnect the card reader.

[nicolaus corelius]

i thought they fixed the card reader issue in vista. is MS retarted or something?

[glc]

I don't know whether they did or not, but old habits die hard. It's best to have a minimum of variables when you install an OS regardless.