Dell XPS PC BIOS does not detect my sata hard drive, but the Vista OS does?

[DaSiliconSurfer]

I have a Dell Dimension XPS 720. My PC has two sata hard drives and one IDE hard drive. When I boot the PC tells me that it doesn't detect any hard drive in sata 3. Then it asks me to press F1 to continue. But, when I get into my OS which is Vista Ultimate, I check 'My Computers' and my second hard drive appears. And sata hard drive works fine.

I've gone into BIOS. Each SATA port also lists the model number of the sata hard drive, but the sata drive I'm having problems with isn't listed and yes the hard drive sata port is set to 'ON'.

I should also note that I never used to have problems with this hard drive in the past. It used to show up on the BIOS drive list.

I need help fixing this problem.

 

[Tmagic650]

If the drive is "seen" by the OS, it has to be detected by the bios. Swap the SATA drives and see if the bios now "sees" the former phantom drive

 

[DaSiliconSurfer]

If the drive is "seen" by the OS, it has to be detected by the bios. Swap the SATA drives and see if the bios now "sees" the former phantom drive

I fixed it. Really it seems the wires were in the wrong order. I think my second hard drive, the drive that wasn't showing up in the bios was connected to the port for the sata dvd drives. I looked at my Dell XPS manual to figure out the right order. Basically the wires go from top to bottom from right to left. Then I took all the wires out and plugged them in in the right order. It now shows up the way it should and my computer is able to boot without interruption. Thanks Tmagic650 for taking the time to answer my question. Your advice really helped.

 

[Tmagic650]

No problem DaSiliconSurfer,
glad you got it sorted