• Hi there and welcome to PC Help Forum (PCHF), a more effective way to get the Tech Support you need!
    We have Experts in all areas of Tech, including Malware Removal, Crash Fixing and BSOD's , Microsoft Windows, Computer DIY and PC Hardware, Networking, Gaming, Tablets and iPads, General and Specific Software Support and so much more.

    Why not Click Here To Sign Up and start enjoying great FREE Tech Support.

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Solved BIOS only recognizes 1st SATA device

Status
Not open for further replies.

TheDiagGuy

PCHF Member
Jul 28, 2019
123
6
36
Hello,
Got another one for you guys.
I picked up this rig yesterday as a replacement for my work computer (nothing wrong with my old one, the i7 in this rig blows my old AM3 unit out of the water). The guy I got it off of clearly had some idea of how computers work internally, and he had it listed as having just one HDD. When I got it back to the shop and opened it up I saw that it had two HDD's. I didn't think anything of it and began to swap parts between my old rig and this rig. They're both HP SFF rigs that are physically identical. My old one is AM3 and the this one is LGA1155 but other than that they're identical. I swapped my SSD from my AM3 straight into my LGA1155 rig and booted. It did the "starting services" windows screen as expected since I was going over to Intel from AMD. However once I got to the OS I saw that I had no optical drive and no secondary drive. I proceeded to do updates and restarted. Still no drives other than my SSD.
This rig's SATA ports are labeled 0, 1, 2, 3. The SSD is plugged into 0, the backup HDD is in 1, and the optical drive is in 2. I rebooted into the BIOS and saw that it was only recognizing the SSD in the 0 SATA port.
I tried swapping SATA cables with the one my SSD was using and kept the SSD in the 0 spot. Still only recognized the SSD in the BIOS. Then I tried just unplugging the SSD's SATA cable and booted into the BIOS. Now it recognized the HDD. I tried plugging the SSD into SATA port 1 and the HDD into port 0 and it only recognized the HDD in the BIOS. Just for grins I tried unplugging all the SATA devices and plugged the optical drive into port 3. It recognized the optical drive.

So what I gain from this is that the BIOS is only recognizing the item that is the highest in the SATA port order. So... why?

Thanks in advance.

Here's the speccy:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.