HDD not being recognized in WHS

[Gracious]

I have a Seagate ST3160815AS with 160GB. The problem is that it's not being recognized by the BIOS anymore. I am running Windows Home Server on this computer. I have formatted it to ntfs. I have tried connecting it internally via the ide cable and externally to another computer with the help of an enclosure but its the same problem. Hence my question: why my HDD is not being recognized in WHS?

[Mindstorm]

Did you tried using the Seagate diagnostics (SeaTools)? You can download it from the Seagate website. Install it on your computer and it will help you to determine the condition of the disk drive on your computer. It will detect the drive although your BIOS or operating system is unable to do so. Generally, BIOS performs an ATA identification which can easily fail if the drive firmware doesn't load in time. It also refers to the MBR but this doesn't affect the drive detection.

[Maxforu]

Was the drive recently installed on your Windows Home Server or this problem appeared to you recently? If this was recently installed then may be your BIOS is not ready to accept so much of hard drive space. So you have to update your bios to let your BIOS identify the newly added hard drive. It is then only that your WHS will come to know that you have a new drive. Here I would like to give you an important point that updating bios is not an easy job and you have to careful while doing that.

[Hardwareman]

Are you sure you are unable to detect the drive in WHS only? Can your BIOS detect the drive? If this isn't then there are several possible causes of this behavior. It could be due to drive not enabled in the BIOS, BIOS limitation, drivers not installed properly, faulty or unplugged data cable, drive is not spinning up, incorrect jumper settings on the drive or even faulty hard drive. Sometime the problem occurs if your BIOS hangs or freezes while detecting the hard drive. Also make sure all cables are properly connected and in good condition. This problem even occurs if you have recently changed the BIOS settings and the hard disk is not configured properly.

[RoninBlade]

I don't think there is any such major thing that might create the problem as Gracious described. All that comes to my mind is that may be he has installed a SATA hard disk for which the BIOS is not ready to accept. May be the BIOS is configured only to detect the IDE drives and so the problem occurs. So according to me to solve this problem you have to reconfigure your BIOS to accept SATA hard drives also. If the problem still occurs then I suggest you to contact Seagate to get things resolved. They definitely must be having a tool to fix your problem.

[deoWo]

You may have installed your hard drive correctly and might be BIOS detected the drive. But sometime problems occur if your Windows is unable to detect the drive and so it was left uninstalled. The easiest way to check this is right click on My Computer > Properties> Hardware (tab)> Device Manager, and see if you have any yellow question marks. If it doesn't help then you are having defective board or cable. If you have another drive then you can even test it by connecting it to a different drive to make sure if the BIOS detects it.