Partions only visible when connected to USB

[Mugsy]

This is going to sound weird, but does anyone know why I can only see the partitions on my drive when it is connected to a USB port and not a SATA port?

This is a 2TB SATA-III 3.5" drive, formatted in standard NTFS format.

 

[Philip Booth]

When connected to USB port, the system recognise it as another drive and shows the partition

 

[Mugsy]

When connected to USB port, the system recognise it as another drive and shows the partition

Thanks for the reply, but that makes no sense. Why would Windows see the partitions when connected via USB but not Sata?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Are you certain the SATA port has not been disabled? And the SATA cable is not damaged?

 

[Mugsy]

Are you certain the SATA port has not been disabled? And the SATA cable is not damaged?

Thanks for the reply, but this is not helpful. I'm an experienced tech and know what I'm doing.

I have multiple drives installed and working. My Boot drive is a Sata-III SSD. If the cable were damaged (it isn't), it would not detect a drive at all, not simply report it as "unallocated". The drive has been formatted in standard NTFS format with 4K clusters (in case there was any question the drive might be using GPT format instead of NTFS.)

The problem has something to do with the way in which Windows "sees" external drives.