Can't detect hard drive after adding a second one

He guys,

Im having problems with adding new harddrive's.Because that causes the old ones to not get detected anymore.

this problem happend to me twice when i tried to add a secondary hard drive , first time it happend it tought, i had destroyed a new hard drive (wich was a samsung spinpoint f3 500gb)

both hard drives i got are sata, so i just connect them with 2 sata cables to the motherboard (wich is a asrock p55 pro) and afcourse 2 power supply cables to te drives. from here its al good.

but here's where it go's wrong. after adding the empty new drive to the pc and starting it up, it only finds the new 1 and the old 1 with windows 7 on it is just gone all of a sudden. so i had to install windows 7 on the new 1 rebooted.... and got into windows and still no sign of the old drive wich all my programms were on.

so next thing i tried was to just get the new 1 out and boot the pc with only the old 1 in. this didnt help i just got a black screen asking me to insert boot device.

this is really driving me crazy since it costed me 2 hard drives already :/ and i dont know what's the problem , i only know that the hard drives aint broken.

i hope you guys know wat the problem could be , i've been googling my *** off but didnt find any problems such as this 1.
 
Connect the two hard drives SATA and power connectors... Connect the SATA connectors to the motherboard, and then turn on your PC and head into BIOS.

Navigate to the hard drives section, and then confirm under the SATA headings that both hard drives are reading correctly.

Then In BIOS, check the boot order. Decide which hard drive you want as priority ( I recommend your old install as its current) and set boot order up in the following order:

1. Removable media (USB memory sticks etc)
2. Optical drive (DVD or DVD R/W)
3. Your first hard disc (whichever one you decided should boot windows)

Finally, check the hard disks are set to AHCI (I think its that) not IDE.

Save settings, and exit BIOS. the PC should then reboot and start into your windows installation on your hard drive with highest priority as set my BIOS.

If that doesn't work, then firstly let us know whether the hard drives are listed in BIOS.
 
hey thnx for helping me out

ive tried wat you said but i can only find the new installed samsung hard drive in the bios the old 1 just doesnt get detected. and when i change it from IDE to AHCI i get a blue screan wen windows is loading.

funny thing is that before i added the samsung disk, the computer had no problems detecting the old 1 . but ever since i added the second one , the first 1 doesn't get detected anymore.

BTW same happend with a dvd drive first it was working fine than i added a dvd burner drive , after i added the second drive the first 1 didn't got detected anymore even if i pulled out the new 1. probably got something 2 do with my mobo or something.
 
You should be able to use the maximum amount of SATA devices for the given ports on your motherboard.

Your problem is likely because your running in IDE mode, which provides legacy support for SATA drives under older OS' like Windows XP and earlier.

Set the BIOS to AHCI, and then reboot BIOS and check to see if they're both detected in BIOS then. Though in fairness, they should both be detected regardless of the settings, as BIOS is just registering which devices are attached to which SATA ports. I would also trying switching to another SATA port on the drive that isn't being recognised.

You'll likely either need to repair your existing windows installation, or format and re-install a clean version to use it with AHCI mode. Windows 7 will recognise SATA devices without the need for additional drivers, you just can't change between IDE/AHCI once the OS is installed.
 
-edit.

ok i found out how to do that i switched from ide to AHCI now and the pc didn't crash.
but it still cant find the second drive in the bios :( .
 
Remove the SATA connector from the drive that won't read in BIOS, and fit it to the hard disc that does. If the hard drive then reads you know the hard disc is fine.

I don't get why its not working to be honest, it must be settings related in BIOS.

Whats the make and model of your motherboard - I'll have a look at the manual when I get a minute just to see if there is anything else that needs changing - There shouldn't be, but its worth a shot.

Have you also tried using another SATA port for the drive that isn't recognising in BIOS?
 
mobo is Asrock p55 pro

and tried changing the sata wires but that didnt help either.

i dont know if it mathers but the old hdd has got an ide connection and a sata one,
but it worked fine on a sata cable before.
 
I didn't know it could have both connectors...

If it has IDE, I know the problem. On the IDE side it will have jumpers to set the mode correctly. On the actual hard drive cover it will have a diagram showing how to set the jumpers up.

What options to you have to set the jumpers? I'm wondering if you have one to disable the IDE interface.
 
actualy when i took a better look at it it didnt have an ide connection confused it with my dvd drive.

but i took the old hard drive out and plugged it in my old pc , at first it crashed when it tried to enter windows. so i booted from dvd drive installed windows 7 on it and now it works fine on the old pc....

atleast this 1 did detect it, so it's it's probably my motherboard on the new pc that came with a factory failure or something. Dunno wat else it could be.
 
ok got the thing fixed,

after i deleted al the content on the old hdd and installed windows on it, i installed the drive back to my new pc, and he inmediatly detected hdd, very weird.
now i lost all my data wich i needed , but atleast i didnt lost my harddrive :p
so it must have been some data on the harddrive that caused the pc to not detect it.
 
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