Hard drives not detected by BIOS after switching to AHCI

[turn_pike]

Greetings all,
I will be receiving my SSD in a few hours and in preparation I tried to change the controller settings in my BIOS to SATA 6 GBit and AHCI. However upon reboot the BIOS wont recognize the hard drives anymore (as in the BIOS itself not Windows).

What could be the problem here ?

The motherboard is an Asus M4A88TD-M/USB3 with AMD 880G Chipset and SB850 Southbridge. The hard drives are Samsung Spinpoint F3, Western Digital Caviar Green and, attached externally, a Seagate Desktop+.

 

[Elixer]

That would be odd.
Clear CMOS, and try again, possibly a glitch.

 

[Ketchup]

What happens if you go back to IDE and keep it at 6?

In all reality, it won't matter because you will not be able to easily switch your BIOS to AHCI with the current Windows install, and your new SSD will be the only one to see much advantage of these settings.

 

[VirtualLarry]

In AHCI mode, the drives hooked up to the SATA ports will not be reported by the standard POST routines. Instead, a supplimentary AHCI BIOS will load, and then it should show the drives being enumerated. At least, that's the way that my P35-DS3R boards work.

 

[Elixer]

In AHCI mode, the drives hooked up to the SATA ports will not be reported by the standard POST routines. Instead, a supplimentary AHCI BIOS will load, and then it should show the drives being enumerated. At least, that's the way that my P35-DS3R boards work.

That isn't how it works on my AMD system, no matter the mode, it displays the HDs where it always displays them...there is no special loader for AHCI.

 

[turn_pike]

SSD arrived.
Tried putting it into AHCI again and it wont recognize any of my drives (including the SSD).

It works normally for the moment by using IDE and 6GB SATA.
I will move the drives around and see if it does anything.

 

[Puffnstuff]

If no drives are being seen reset the bos and start again.

 

[mikeymikec]

BIOS update perhaps?

I've got the same generation of Asus board (M4A89GTD PRO/USB3), and while it does the separate AHCI loader screen, they're recognised in the main BIOS as well IIRC. I haven't had any trouble with AHCI support on my board, though I have updated the BIOS a few times for unrelated reasons.

 

[Ketchup]

SSD arrived.
Tried putting it into AHCI again and it wont recognize any of my drives (including the SSD).

It works normally for the moment by using IDE and 6GB SATA.
I will move the drives around and see if it does anything.

I had a Gigabyte board that didn't show the hard drive where I thought. It was actually in the list for the controller, which loads after the initial BIOS loads. It did show as an option in the boot order though. You may want to have it set as AHCI in the boot order you want, and go ahead and see if the Windows installer will recognize it.

 

[turn_pike]

Thank you for telling me to clear CMOS. I would never have thought of that yet for reasons beyond my understanding it did work. The ssd is placed on Sata 1 in AHCI while my two other internal drives are on Sata 5 and 6 in IDE.

Windows 8.1 still wouldnt cooperate so I just install a new one on the SSD. I hope Steam games wont have to be reinstalled cos that would kill my internet. (UPDATE: Nice one Steam. You only have to run steam from the old folder and it will automatically configure itself to be run under the new windows installation).

Here are the before and after picture. Cheers mate.

 

[tcsenter]

Sometimes when you change the controller mode, it changes up options for the channel configuration and boot device priority.

 

[user848]

turn_pike

as I see you couldn't solve it (to make all drivers work with AHCI mode), here's an easy solution - connect your HDD drives to 2-4 ports (don't connect it to 5-6 if you want everything to work in AHCI mode), then it will work, seems there is a bug when trying to use drives on different controllers (group) and it's AHCI on both

So you'll get next picture to solve your problem:
Group #1 (controller - AHCI mode):
- port 1: SSD drive
- port 2: HDD drive
- port 3: not used (or more HDD drives if you have)
- port 4: not used
Group #2 (controller - AHCI mode, but we don't use it anyway):
- port 5: not used
- port 6: not used

you have SATA ports group #1 - "1-4" (4 ports) and group #2 - "5-6" (2 ports), some motherboards have two controllers (they can run in different mode)
for specific group (controller) you can choose AHCI or IDE mode
for example if you need some drives to work with AHCI and some with IDE, then you should set AHCI for group 1 ports and IDE for group 2 ports, connect AHCI supposed drives to 1-4 ports and IDE supposed drives to 5-6 ports
BUT if you want to use everything in AHCI mode then connect all drives to 1-4 ports and set AHCI mode for this group (#1) otherwise bios would not see yours drives on 5-6 ports if there AHCI mode is enabled

p.s. also update BIOS if you don't have the latest version (it can fix some bugs for such cases)

 

[Elixer]

as I see you couldn't solve it ...

As I see, you didn't read the date. Nov 28, 2014
You think after all those years they still have this issue?

 

[user848]

As I see, you didn't read the date. Nov 28, 2014
You think after all those years they still have this issue?

I read, I found this thread by googling, I had similar problem and found out how to solve it, I posted the solution in case new users would find this thread with similar problem and no

as I see you couldn't solve it ...- this just introductory words to show that this problem wasn't solved, it doesn't matter if author of this thread would see my answer, but for new users