OCZ Arc 100 SSD not being recgonized by BIOS

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BuddhistMonk

Junior Member
Jan 12, 2015
3
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First and foremost, I have read around and found similar threads regarding similar situations. Some threads were abandoned, not answered or were just enough different than my situation that it didnt answer my questions.

I just installed a fresh Win7 64 Bit Premium on a SSD as my new Primary drive. Very Basically, I did the following steps for installing the new SSD,

1. Changed SATA Controller in BIOS to AHCI prior to installing Win 7 64 bit.

2. Installed Win 7 64 bit. Now, when I go into my BIOS, under "Standard CMOS settings" I dont see my SSD or my Disk Drive.

Why this is strange...
1. My computer boots just fine. Albeit it does display this message before the windows logo.
(Serial ATA ANCI BIOS, Version iSrc 1.20E This version supports only hard disk and CDROM disks. Please Wait. This take few seconds.)
2. In Device Management under Disk Drives it reads, OCZ-ARC100 SCSI Disk Device and under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers it reads, Intel(R) 5.... SATA AHCI Controller. I suspect both of those mean that the computer can read the SSD.
3. I have a Gigabyte p55a-ud4p, when I hit F12 at boot to get to disk boot order, The computer reads that I have the SSD installed and that it can be selected.
4. Sometimes it can skip the boot into BIOS splash screen when booting besides that the computer boots just fine. No issues reported. No Blue Screens and no hiccups.

My questions is simple. Why the heck does BIOS refuse to display my SSD?


*Things Iv done.
-Reset CMOS
-Iv installed a new BIOS version F14(for my MoBo)
-Changed the SATA controller from AHCI to IDE and back to AHCI
-Changed the SATA cables, albeit I have NOT changed the slot in which it is connected. My SSD is connected into my SATA 6gb/s sata port 6 on my MoBo currently.

OH! Also, When I am in BIOS looking at the Master and slave drives nothing shows up there, but when I click on Port 6 it brings up information like 240GB. So it still reads it... kind of.

This has been driving me nuts.

Thanks in advance.

Robert
 
Last edited:
denis280

denis280

Diamond Member
Jan 16, 2011
3,434
9
81
Welcome to the forums.BuddhistMonk. did you disconnect all other hdd before installing the os on the ssd.
 
S

soccerballtux

Lifer
Dec 30, 2004
12,553
2
76
so, in most cases IDE channels are specifically IDE channels. I have 4, no PATA ports/only SATA ports, and those are there for when the SATA3 controller is in IDE mode. Kindof. Because when I change to IDE mode suddently I get like 6 or 10 channels or something silly. So I'm not exactly sure what the original 4 are for. I don't recall how many ports I have. But the idea is, the channels are technically visible to the SATA controller even though they're set as (not IDE).

the SSD is plugged into the port that corresponds with where IDE channel 6 would be were your controller in IDE mode.
 
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O

ocztony

Junior Member
Oct 21, 2007
12
0
0
www.ocz.com
BuddhistMonk said:
First and foremost, I have read around and found similar threads regarding similar situations. Some threads were abandoned, not answered or were just enough different than my situation that it didnt answer my questions.

I just installed a fresh Win7 64 Bit Premium on a SSD as my new Primary drive. Very Basically, I did the following steps for installing the new SSD,

1. Changed SATA Controller in BIOS to AHCI prior to installing Win 7 64 bit.

2. Installed Win 7 64 bit. Now, when I go into my BIOS, under "Standard CMOS settings" I dont see my SSD or my Disk Drive.

Why this is strange...
1. My computer boots just fine. Albeit it does display this message before the windows logo.
(Serial ATA ANCI BIOS, Version iSrc 1.20E This version supports only hard disk and CDROM disks. Please Wait. This take few seconds.)
2. In Device Management under Disk Drives it reads, OCZ-ARC100 SCSI Disk Device and under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers it reads, Intel(R) 5.... SATA AHCI Controller. I suspect both of those mean that the computer can read the SSD.
3. I have a Gigabyte p55a-ud4p, when I hit F12 at boot to get to disk boot order, The computer reads that I have the SSD installed and that it can be selected.
4. Sometimes it can skip the boot into BIOS splash screen when booting besides that the computer boots just fine. No issues reported. No Blue Screens and no hiccups.

My questions is simple. Why the heck does BIOS refuse to display my SSD?


*Things Iv done.
-Reset CMOS
-Iv installed a new BIOS version F14(for my MoBo)
-Changed the SATA controller from AHCI to IDE and back to AHCI
-Changed the SATA cables, albeit I have NOT changed the slot in which it is connected. My SSD is connected into my SATA 6gb/s sata port 6 on my MoBo currently.

OH! Also, When I am in BIOS looking at the Master and slave drives nothing shows up there, but when I click on Port 6 it brings up information like 240GB. So it still reads it... kind of.

This has been driving me nuts.

Thanks in advance.

Robert
Click to expand...

Robert...i can only assume the bios code is to old to recognise the arc's ID string so reports nothing. With the board booting fine and working as it should is this an issue?

Tony...and yes I work for ocz
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
The devices listed in the CMOS settings are straight IDE devices. By using AHCI, your disk controllers are not running that way. What you're (not) seeing is correct, if a bit weird (IE, seeing something there of some size, but not all the right info). Try to boot MS-DOS or Dr-DOS, and it won't see anything :).
 
Last edited:
ronbo613

ronbo613

Golden Member
Jan 9, 2010
1,237
45
91
Greetings fellow GA-P55-UD4P owner.

If I understand correctly, you have your SSD connected to one of the white SATA ports on the motherboard. Those ports are controlled by a Marvell 9128 chip. You will probably have problems if your boot device is connected to those two ports. It is a pretty well known fact that these Marvell ports will not give you SATA III(6Gbps) performance, in fact, they are slower than the Intel P55 SATA ports. If you have an optical drive connected to the Marvell ports, you may not be able to boot from an optical disc.

The fact your drive shows up as a SCSI device may mean you have Marvell RAID or Gigabyte RAID drivers installed. Check the Device Manager; on my motherboard, with all SATA ports in use, the drives connected to the Intel chip are listed by the drive name. The two drives connected to the Marvell ports are listed as "(drive name)ATA Devices". A drive connected to a PCI SATA card, because of a third party driver, shows as a "(drive name)SCSI Disc Device". All drives show up in Windows Disc Management.

Plug your SSD into one of the Intel SATA ports(the blue ones) and try that. BIOS should be set to AHCI.
 
Puffnstuff

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,187
4,871
136
Unfortunately the marvell controller is crap. I've got an evga z97 ftw that has them and they were constantly losing any drive attached to them making them completely worthless.
 
ronbo613

ronbo613

Golden Member
Jan 9, 2010
1,237
45
91
Puffnstuff said:
Unfortunately the marvell controller is crap.
Click to expand...

If you install a PCI SATA controller card to compensate for the Marvell motherboard ports you might not be able to use and the controller card has a Marvell chip, there's a good chance the controller card drivers will conflict with the Marvell motherboard drivers and may corrupt data on the drives connected to the controller card. So you have that going for you; which is something.
 
A

Andrepartthree

Junior Member
Sep 27, 2015
2
0
66
Sorry to resurrect an old thread here (brand new to the forums too so if I'm breaking any rules please let me know!) ... the reason I'm posting here is that threads like this show up in a google search when other computer users are having similar issues (even if you're not registered in the forum which is kind of cool :) ) and I've been in situations where even years after the OP has posted an issue, I can still find a thread and it contains a solution to an issue I'm having here and now in the present day.. thus my post, in case someone else has similar issues with their motherboard BIOS and this hard drive and does a google search like I did

My motherboard is the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P model (which admittedly is an almost four year old MB at the time that I post this) and I'm running Windows 8 64 bit.. I also had the same issue with the OCZ Arc 100 SSD (240 GB ) not showing up in BIOS which led to a "gulp, my new hard drive isn't going to work! " moment.. then I tried booting up my PC anyways with my old (primary, with the C partition on it ) hard drive still attached and the OCZ as a secondary hard drive and sure enough Windows recognized it.

Here's the real reason for my post.. I thought I could use Ease US Todo Free version to clone the C/Windows partition from my old hard drive (an 80 GB SSD drive which is four years old, probably not as "advanced' as the OCZ drive far as the 80 gb's tech) to the OCZ drive which I was hoping to make my new primary hard drive ... no such luck, when I tried to boot off the OCZ drive I got an error message stating a Windows NT loader file of some sort was missing..

Having previously created an image of my old primary hard drive using the Windows 8 system image tool, I then tried restoring that image onto the new OCZ hard drive using the Windows 8 recovery disc (which windows will prompt you to create when you make that system image)... no joy there either, got an error message stating that the "architecture is different".

So, I had to reinstall Windows 8 on the new OCZ hard drive from scratch.. which of course meant re-installing all the programs I have on the PC as well... huge pain in the butt but in the end Windows is now booting off the new OCZ hard drive just fine despite it still not showing up in the BIOS.... I've rebooted the PC several times, even played a couple of video games that I thought were suitably graphic-intensive for the PC given it's video card and other configurations (Batman Arkham Asylum and Alan Wake) as a "just for the heck of it" sort of test and no problems PC worked just fine..

So takeaway lessons here if you have a OCZ Arc 100 SSD and it's not showing up in BIOS

- go ahead and do a system image if you have Windows 7 or Windows 8 prior to migrating everything to the new hard drive if you want to make that your new primary hard drive.. you never know you might have better luck than me :p

- similarly, try using Ease US Todo Free version .. or if you're not cheap like me :p and want to use a different cloning software tool that you actually pay for :p , try one you've had success with before and see if that works, again you never know your case might be different than mine...

- if not though be prepared to reinstall Windows 7 or Windows 8 from scratch but if you do that you're probably fine :) ...

Also I noticed that when I reinstalled, Win 8 didn't ask me to reactivate Windows, probably since the hard drive was the only piece of hardware that changed. From my previous experience though worst case scenario you call the phone number Windows gives you if you need to reactivate , simply tell the robot you speak to on the phone the truth.. Windows is only on one PC, the same one you're trying to re-activate it on... read the code your PC's screen displays to the robot, enter the code the robot gives you in return and you're all set, Windows can be reactivated no problem ! :)

Sorry for the ultra long post btw ... I'm just hoping this helps someone else someday thus the tons of details :p ..

Also thanks very much to the OP and everyone who posted here in reply to OP ! :) If it wasn't for you guys I would have simply assumed I had a faulty hard drive and sent it back to the manufacturer, you guys saved me a lot of grief and effort! :)
 
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