Hard Drive not detected through SATA, but it is through USB.

This week my hard drive seemed to crash, I got the file with the question mark and it wouldn't show up in disk utility. I went out and bought a new hard drive, popped it in and it too doesn't show up. I put my old hard drive in an enclosure and plugged it in through USB, and my macbook starts up just fine that way. What could be the problem?

dcbaros wrote:
Well I know the drive is fine because I can run it from the usb enclosure, but is the sata cable going bad a common problem?
Not common but I've seen it happen more than once so I wouldn't be surprised if that is what's going on with your computer.

Similar Messages

Hard-Drive not Detected load sata drivers

Hi everyone I have a G6-1189sa notebook, I had a faulty harddrive so replaced it with the exact same drive 750GB WD, Thing is I could not save anything from the original drive ? so no recovery partitions are anything I even lost all my family photos and software.
Ok so I done a straight swap over and went ahead installing my fresh Windows 7 x64 disk, then I got an error message saying no device detected please install driver etc etc.
I know I need to install the sata driver for the harddrive to be detected, so I extracted the HP sata control driver to a USB pen the tried to load the driver, with the load driver option on the install disk.
Error message saying driver is not signed !!!! So after some reading on google I learned I had to disable the naitive sata option in the bios settings for the harddrive to be detected.
Thing is there is not a option for this in my bios ? unless Im missing something like an advanced bios setting.
I even went to the Intel site and tried some of there drivers but I get the same error message driver not signed.
So my question is ? how can I disable the native sata option if Its possible , If not how can I load the HP sata driver if its not signed.
Its very anyoing someone even said I have to slip the drivers in and make a new home made W7 disk myself to get my pc working again what the hell, where would I start.
Maybe I should put the laptop in the post and send it back, Ive never had so much trouble before making simple memory and harddrive exchanges.
Any advice please people Im at my wits end, my laptop is only a few month old and its now a door stopper lol

Hi,
Boot into the bios and be sure that the hard drive is detected.
Sata drivers are included in Windows 7.
Return the bios to its default settings and use the HP Recovery Disks. If you don't have the Recovery Disks then order them from HP. Order HP recovery Disks.
HP DV9700, t9300, Nvidia 8600, 4GB, Crucial C300 128GB SSD
HP Photosmart Premium C309G, HP Photosmart 6520
HP Touchpad, HP Chromebook 11
Custom i7-4770k,Z-87, 8GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650,GTX 760
Custom i7-4790k,Z-97, 16GB, Vertex 3 SSD, Plextor M.2 SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, Corsair HX650, GTX 660TI
Windows 7/8 UEFI/Legacy mode, MBR/GPT

Hard Drive Not detected after replacing DC In Board

So after more than a year of jiggling an easliy bent AC adapter in the port to get my ibook G4 to charge it just quit and would not charge. I suspected it was the slightly loose DC in port (having no idea what was behind the little hole) so I took it to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store where they confirmed it was likely the DC in board. I was told that just sending my little old ibook away to get fixed would cause an exorbitant $330 just to ship it out, never mind any parts, etc. It was suggested I just buy a new macbook and be done with it. But we've been through a lot and I didn't want to just toss her away so I found a DC In board and replaced it myself. Parts and directions courtesy of ifixit.com
So the part is working well enough that it detects the new AC Adapter (this one new and unbent), which is great. Now I have a slightly larger problem and that is the dreaded little finder/? flashing icon that comes up when I start the computer. It won't start in safe mode. I can't find the original disks (Panther OSX) that came with it. I popped in my Tiger Install Disk and that (Thankfully) came up so I was able to open Disk Utility and lo and behold no hard drive was detected. Just the optical drive and the Tiger DVD.
I was so careful! Did I poke the Hard Drive or something? Is she mad at me for opening her? If anyone has any advice on how I can repair this myself please let me know. I'm desparate to have my baby back.
Message was edited by: alemicia

It's possible that something was disrupted during the repair. You might go back to the ifixit site and look at the instructions for replacing the hard drive. You want to try and see if somehow you disconnected it or something like that. There's a good chance that it is something simple that you can fix. Looking at the pictures might trigger a memory of maybe something taken loose and not reconnected. And try to find your original discs--you will need them.
Good luck!

External hard drive not detecting

Hello,
I have installed Win 8 to my system which is having a 2.5GHz processor. That's fine.
But When I am connecting, an External SATA I hard drive through enclosure, Its not detecting.
But It is able to detect all other external hard drives.
please let me no what to do.
Thanks in advance,
Giri.

Hi Giri,
What's the size of your External HDD?
Please know that if the disk format is MBR, system can only recognize 2 TB of it. Please understand that the MBR Partitions can define a disk drive capacity up to 2.2TB. If we need to use more capacity of the HDD, we need to convert it to GPT format.
Also, you can try to change to cable power connector to see if this issue can be caused by insufficient power supplication.
Thanks for your understanding.
Kate Li
TechNet Community Support

Seagate Hard Drives not detected by the Windows 7 installer

I've spent hours on this trying every conceivable reason, so I apologize in advance for the length on this post.
I connected a Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drive to a P35 chipset system and attempted to install Windows 7 RTM onto it. The installer got to the part of detecting hard drives, but could not detect this drive. Native SATA mode was enabled, and AHCI was enabled.
I disabled Native SATA mode, then after that failed I also tried disabling AHCI by setting the controller to IDE mode. Still, the Windows 7 installer refused to detect the drive.
I replaced both the SATA & power cables, verified the drives are detected by the AHCI firmware and the BIOS, and I even tried different motherboard SATA ports to no effect. I took a second , identical Seagate 320GB SATA hard drive, this time pre-formatted it inside Windows 7 RC using NTFS defaults, and again (with and without AHCI and Native SATA mode) Windows 7 will not see this hard drive either!
I even downloaded the AHCI preinstall drivers and loaded these using a flash drive. When I did Windows 7 would autodetect the ICH9 driver and I would click Next. Windows 7 would suddenly see the drive, but all options to format or create a partition are grayed out. Clicking the more info button gives me this error message:
"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."
I used the AHCI preinstall drivers specific for the motherboard (Vista 64) and I also tried the AHCI preinstall drivers from Intel for Windows 7 RC 64. As of this writing Intel has not released official Windows 7 RTM Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers.
In frustration I installed a SSD (with AHCI and Native SATA mode enabled) and suddenly Windows 7 detects the SSD without needing to load any driver (as would be expected, since Vista and 7 include Intel Storage Manager drivers by default already). I installed Windows 7 RTM 64bit onto the SSD without issue.
15 minutes later I was at the Windows 7 desktop, and Windows 7 was showing the Seagate 320GB hard drive under "My Computer" as normal. I could even use the Seagate hard drive as normal as if nothing was wrong. For kicks I launched the Windows 7 installer inside Windows 7, but as you can see below it still refused to see the drive, despite the drive being shown under My Computer:
(Since I can't use thumbnails, here's the direct link: http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n129/Chanur64/Box/Howpossible.jpg )
Also I should note I previously had Windows 7 Beta installed on an IDE drive in this exact system, and had no problems with it. Windows 7 RTM would allow me to install to an IDE drive and allowed me to install to an SSD, but it cannot see and cannot install onto both Seagate 320GB hard drives. These Seagates are known good drives previously part of a RAID 5 array.
If anyone knows what is going on or has some ideas I've not tried I would love to hear from you and get this figured out. Suffice to say this is not a promising start for Windows 7.
Intel Q6600
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4 (ICH9R southbridge)
4GB DDR2-800
2x Seagate 320GB SATA 7200.10
Intel X25-M 80GB
8800GTS 320mb
PC Power & Cooling 750w PSU

I just had to solve the same issue with a Seagate Momentus Thin hard drive (
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/slim-laptop-hard-drives/)
Tried several BIOS configuration, AHCI drivers, etc and Windows 7 32bits couldn't detect the drive.
My solution was to boot with a USB pendrive with HirenCD tools (http://www.hiren.info/) and use a partition manager to erase disk contents, create and format a partition.
Windows 7 detected the hard drive for the first time and now is installing, so.. crossing fingers.
Thanks,
Diego
Diego,
Thanks for the information and the link to Hiren.info! I'm creating my bootable flash drive now. I'll report back if I get this to work.
I had this same issue on a Seagate Momentus 7200.2 "laptop" hard drive. I say "lap top" in quotes because it's actually in a desktop (HP Compaq Ultra-slim dc7800). I believe it was an upgrade, so it took me a while to figure out what I was dealing
with until I finally took out the harddrive and checked what company made it!
Thanks everyone!

MacBook Pro 13" 5.5 (mid 2009) new hard drive not detected

Hi,
New here, tried searching for the answer here but could not find any.
I got a few hard drive error on my old macbook black 250gb drive that I put in this MacBook pro.
The system became really slow and kept hanging (beachball).
So I went out and bought a new 500gb WD Scorpio Blue 5400rpm.
The problem is that my MBP doesn't detect the new HDD when I put it in there (doesn't even spin up when correctly put in). It does spin up when only connected to the sata connector but still no detection.
When I put it in an external USB cradle there is no problem.
Also found out that way that the old hdd works fine when booted from the USB cradle.
Does anyone here have any idea what the problem could be?
I'm starting to think it's the controller, but that would probably mean I can go out and buy a new MBP...
Allart

Could also be a bad cable...make an appointment at an Apple store. If the cable is bad, should cost less than $20 to fix.

[SOLVED] Hard Drive not detected

Hi,
I've bought Hitachi Touro Desk Pro 2TB USB 3.0 external drive recently, however there's a problem using it in Linux. I can fully see it in Win7 x64 disk manager, but running sudo fdisk -l or parted -l gives me only my internal sda drive. Additionaly, having connected the drive to pc when arch linux booting - it just stucks on "Waiting on UDev uevents to be processed" for approximetaly 20-30 secs and the continues with booting leaving the UDev uevents status failed. Dmesg then gives me this:
[david@David-ArchLinux ~]$ dmesg | grep sd
[ 3.423524] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 312581808 512-byte logical blocks: (160 GB/149 GiB)
[ 3.423582] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 3.423585] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 3.423610] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 3.466205] sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
[ 3.466422] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[ 3.756021] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[ 4.865240] EXT4-fs (sda2): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[ 8.029066] sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
[ 8.029069] sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman
[ 8.070180] sdhci-pci 0000:15:00.2: SDHCI controller found [1180:0822] (rev 21)
[ 8.070206] sdhci-pci 0000:15:00.2: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[ 8.071247] sdhci-pci 0000:15:00.2: Will use DMA mode even though HW doesn't fully claim to support it.
[ 9.055685] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 37.654097] EXT4-fs (sda2): re-mounted. Opts: user_xattr
[ 39.440050] sd 4:0:0:0: uas_eh_abort_handler tag 1
[ 39.440052] sd 4:0:0:0: uas_eh_abort_handler tag 0
[ 39.440057] sd 4:0:0:0: uas_eh_device_reset_handler tag 1
[ 39.440059] sd 4:0:0:0: uas_eh_target_reset_handler tag 1
[ 39.440062] sd 4:0:0:0: uas_eh_bus_reset_handler tag 0
[ 39.671415] sd 4:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
[ 39.671417] sd 4:0:0:0: Device offlined - not ready after error recovery
[ 39.671434] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671468] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671495] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671526] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671554] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] READ CAPACITY failed
[ 39.671556] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671582] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x01 driverbyte=0x00
[ 39.671585] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
[ 39.671590] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671619] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 39.671622] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
[ 39.671624] sd 4:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[ 39.671651] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Asking for cache data failed
[ 39.671679] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 39.671860] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[ 40.133479] Adding 3867644k swap on /dev/sda3. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:3867644k
[ 67.060794] EXT4-fs (sda2): re-mounted. Opts: user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered,commit=15
However i can see the drive in /sys/block or /dev/disk/by-id. In another opensuse machine the drive is accessible but only when connected during boot up, connecting it when the system is already on does nothing.
Having the drive formatted/unformatted,gpt or mbr type doesn't change a thing.
Last edited by Atronach (2012-04-03 02:24:10)

This is what i've found out: Adding "usb" hook to initcpio removes the hang when booting and makes the disk being able to be accessible and detected by both fdisk and parted but sometimes after restart or rebooting to Win and back to Arch introduces the hang again, i have to unplug the disk from power and plug back to remove the hang on next boot. I think the usb hook shouldn't be required since it's meant for usb root devices or when connecting at early start which is not my case, USB sticks don't need the usb hook at all anyway. What more I still get some warnings (probably not harmfull) on boot with either usb stick or sata disk connected no matter what. I would prefer to connect it quietly (without warnings) or not trying to connect the disk at boot at all and then kde should take care of it when logged into user account - any idea?
The impossibility reconnecting the disk when system is on is caused by the missing hotswap/hotplug feature for the disk because udev device manager treats it as internal, you can verify it like this: "cat /sys/block/sdx/removable". Creating udev rule with UDISKS_SYSTEM_INTERNAL=0 as stated at http://lamarque-lvs.blogspot.com/2011/0 … art-2.html solved the problem only for few sessions, after some restarts and reboots to Win it fell back to removable=0, funny isn't it?
So IMHO waiting for kernel update is pointless since the problem lays in how udev treats sata external drives generally, creating a proper udev rule to force a disk to be removable is crucial or maybe waiting for a udev bugfix to make the udisks_system_internal=0 value work and optionally adding some grub kernel parameter to NOT probe for external block devices on boot (to get rid off the confusing warings and the need for the usb hook) would be preferable for me.
Last edited by Atronach (2011-09-29 08:26:17)

External WD 1 TD hard drive not detected on MBP 13.3" OS X 10.9.1

Hi all,
I have a WD 1 TB hard drive that is not detected by my MBP 13.3" which has OS X 10.9.1
The check box for external disks is flagged in Finder>preferences
I have also looked to see if the hard drive is deteced in disk utilities but it is not.
I have a lot of data stored in the external drive which I cannot afford loose.
Any help on this is highlt appreciated!!

dead SATA card extremely like. .... a VERY COMMON problem,
read here all about it:
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD

Internal 3TB Cavier Green WD Hard Disk not detect on mac but detected on Windows (Parallels

I bought a 3TB Cavier Green Western Digital and I have a Astone external 3.5 case. I attached both of this together and hook up USB to my Mac mini. It seems like my Disk Utility doesn't detect my 3TB at all, at first I thought my hard drive has a problem. So I open up Windows 8 on my Mac running Parallels and try it, It works perfectly and detected on Windows via Parallels and apprently it also detected on my Dell Inspiron Laptop. So I don't know what happen to Mac, it seems like Mac OS X doesn't want to detect the 3TB at all. Is there anything I can do?

I can guarantee you that it work seamlessly on Windows with the same enclosure, Windows 8 running Paralles on my Mac and Windows 7 on Dell Inspiron showing me 2794.52GB. I am running Mountain Lion 10.8.2. I already check the System Profiler on my Mac where you click the System Report>USB. It can be detect, but not detail. I will try to run Terminal app in few days and will update you again. I emailed Western Digital. At the moment, this is what they ask me to do.
Please connect your drive onto a working computer with pure Windows environment and perform an "Extended Test" to test your drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows. Kindly go to the link below if you need assistance:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=940
Please provide us the screenshot of the test result so we may verify the cause of the issue.
The "Extended Test" is going to take me 53 hours.
Do you think the next update 10.8.3 will help me? Because I read about BootCamp able to support 3TB hard drive.

Hard Drive not detected

Hello all,
I am working on a friend's 15 inch iMac G5 and have run across what I'm hoping is not a major issue.
The iMac was not booting and displayed a gray screen, I zapped PRAM, tried to boot from CD, and tried Target disk mode. Once I was finally able to boot from the CD the installer will not detect the iMac's internal HD. I also booted from my PowerBook which could not detect the HD. The Apple System Profiler has the same HD blindness.
Is there any other explanation besides the HD being dead? This computer is only a year old, how could the HD die so fast?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
-Noah
PMG5: 1.8GHz, 1GB Ram 2x120GB HDs, PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.7)

My iMac G5 20" is about 1.5 years old and is giving the same problem as well. It just die on me last weekend. As most of you explained earilier, it's unable to detected SATA drive. I replaced it with new SATA drive, and it's still unable to detected it. The fan also crank at high speed as well.
Doing that should rule out SATA hard drive issue.
It this going to be issue regarding to Apple products?
I'm wondering if it's power supply issue. I know from past experience that with PC, that there's been
failure related to power supply not giving enough juice to certain component.
Sadly I don't have extra power supply with me to verify my theory.

Hard drives not detected after bios update

Hello
K7T Turbo 2 kt133a
I bought a new chip a while back and therefore updated my bios.
My system has worked on and off for a while now, however i have not been able to get it to boot for 2 days.
I have tried bios version 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6, the same thing in all cases.
So i decided that the problem was not the bios, but my IDE cable, so i installed another one, still no had drives!!
even when my first hard drive is recognized and the system boots, the secon hard drive isn never detected.
What do I do now???
Dude I think i migh just have to order a dell.......
Any help would be great
thanks

Hi
jumpers should be right
the top HD (on the end of the cable) is l:::
and the bottom (slave i assume) is ::l:
My PSU details are as follows (dont know much about power supplys)
it is called a switching power supply (likely not a very good one)
Max output is 300W
115V / 7A / 60hz
+3.3 +5 +12 -12 -5 +5sb Blk Grn Gry
14A 30A 10A 0.5A 0.5A 1.5A Com p-on PG
Hope this heps
I have thought that this PS was a POS (piece of ) since day 1, so if i need to replace tell me what to get, this thing is loud, and the system has never been overly stable (the computer has always powered down etc on its own
Thanks Guys

USB hard drive not detected on reboot

I am running Windows 7 Ulitmate 64-bit on my 2011 15" Macbook Pro. I have a USB Hard Drive (WD My Passport SE - USB 3.0/2.0 - 1 TB).
The hard drive is formatted for HFS+ and I am running Mac Drive 8 to detect it in Windows.
For some reason when I reboot (in Windows), the hard drive won't be there until I unplug it and plug it back in.
This is really annoying! Can anybody help me? I'm pretty good with things like this but I can't think of any reason this shouldn't be working right.
HELP =T
Message was edited by: PTHEOFYL
Message was edited by: PTHEOFYL

I am having the exact same problem. WD 1TB Passport. USB 3.0 drive. Running on Windows 7 Pro 64 via Bootcamp.
My 1TB Passport is formatted with FAT32 and works with Windows and Mac OS.
I was getting the same problem when I was running Windows XP Pro on the same MacBook Pro. I was hoping the upgrade to Windows 7 would remidy the issue but it did not.
The drive light is on in a steady state when I boot and I have the same symptoms as reported by everyone else above.
In my research, I am leaning towards thinking that it is a power issue related to the cable used to connect the USB 3.0 Drive or something to do with the USB driver for Bootcamp, but researching the WD site suggests it's a power issue, not a faulty or failing drive.
I have a 500GB WD Passport USB 2.0 also attached to my computer, also running FAT32 and it starts up no problem. It's just the USB 3.0 drive that is having this issue.
Also worth noting; the drive is detected properly when I boot in Mac OS X. It's only the Windows side I have to unplug and plug back in to access the drive.

External hard drive not visible in Finder, but is operating

iMac, 2 Gb RAM, Snow Leopard 10.6.4.
It has 4 external USB drives attached through a powered hub. All of a sudden, after about a year, one of them no longer shows up in ‘Finder’. However, all four drives have an icon on the desktop. The drive is visible and verifiable in ‘Disk Utility’. Double clicking the desktop icon opens the drive and I can copy a file from it. iTunes can see it. From a Macbook’s ‘Finder’, over WiFi, I can see and copy files to and from the drive. Finder Preferences shows nothing amiss. I’ve shut down and restarted the iMac several times with no change. The drive just does not show up in Finder on the host iMac.
Searching this forum has not helped. Any suggestions?
Max

Well, this is embarrassing. A suggestion from an older thread on Macrumors.com called "Hard Drive does not appear in Finder / Desktop", solved this problem. Simply drag the missing drive icon from the desktop to Finder! Perseverance and different search wording AND reading a lot of stuff pays off.
If other's problem is not solved with this fix, you might benefit from this 10.5-based thread. They also mention an Apple 10.5 fix. Both URL's below.
The op's problem was that the drive did not appear in Finder OR the desktop but was operational. There was a lot of in-depth information with this fix embedded.
Thanks for the interest and suggestions.
Max
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-209905.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25203?viewlocale=en_US

External hard drive - not detected by PC

Hello,
I recently got a seagate hard drive and mounted it on a case to use as an external hard drive for my pbook 12inch. I went through the formatting on my PB, and everything works fine with it on the PB.
However, when I try to connect it to my PC, the hard drive doesn't show being mounted. My computer detects that a new hardware is connected, but I can't find the drives in the My Computer folder.
Does anyone know what I need to do? I'd like to use the Hard drive to back up my PC as well.

If you've formatted it through the PB then it will be in HFS+ - don't Windows use FAT32?

Please help! Macbook internal hard drive not detectable.

Dear all,
Hope this post finds you well.
I have a very old Macbook and one day the hard drive started making skipping sounds and the system froze. Upon restarting, the machine would not boot and displayed either a white screen or a flashing question mark folder. I used a USB to boot and tried to use disk utility to repair the hard drive. However, the hard drive is not visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. I have also tried inserting the hard drive into another Macbook while booting with a USB, but the result was the same: No HD in Finder or Disk Utility.
Is it possible to recover the files from the HD? Any help would be much appreciated.
Kind regards
Xierong

Well that hard drive is most likely toast. You'd need to place the hard drive in an external enclosure or use a USB "dongle" like here:
http://www.amazon.com/USB-SATA-5-25-Cable-Adapter/dp/B000YJBL78
Plug that into a working MacBook (You'll have to get a new hard drove or use that other one. Run Data Rescue II, or III and there are some others reviewed here::
http://data-recovery-software-review.toptenreviews.com/mac-recovery-software/dat a-rescue-review.html
It used to be you could run II for free to see what it found. Mt only experience is with II. Usually if I can get the drive to spin up I can recover most things. There was one time I jiggled the drive and got it to spin up and had to hold it very still until it finished recovering all my files!

Hard Drive not detected through SATA, but it is through USB.

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