MSI 870a-G54 motherboard not detecting second hard drive

My PC is using MSI 870a-G54 motherboard; I have 2 hard drives in my system. I was using Windows XP in my PC till last on e week and it was working fine with my both hard drives. But it started functioning slowly because of viruses and too many temp file accumulated in my system. So I upgraded my OS to Windows 7. Now the primary hard drive is detected properly but the 2nd hard drive is not detected. I tried if re-installing OS solve the problem. But it didn’t help. Does anyone know what might be the reason of this problem?

Are you sure that there is no problem in the working of the hard drive? Have you checked if the disks are spinning properly? When the hard drive was properly working, did you ever check for bad sectors in it? You can try connecting the hard drive in another PC to see if the problem is with hard drive or with the motherboard or OS. If you are checking for proper disk spinning, see to it that you test it for more that 1 hour. Connect the hard drive to your PC, start the system. Wait till you shutdown the system. This is to be done to see if the disks don’t stop spinning in between.

This type of problems are usually seen in peripherals of a computer due to overheating of the system. This overheating of system leads to broken PCB issue in the hard drive. With broken PCB, it becomes difficult for BIOS to detect the drive in your system. If the PCB is damaged due to overheating, then it can be repaired by cooling it down by placing it in refrigerator.

You can try connecting the hard drive in different PCs with same technical specifications. See if they work in those systems. You can even see if it works properly in place of primary drive. I recommend you to see if it works with various OS. I suggest you to try it out with Linux. It is good for solving such problems. Conducting such tests using a Mac is not preferable.

All the modern hard drives have much empty spaces in their built which are enough to trap enough amount of dust which can disturb the working of internals. You can try using blowers to clean the internals. If you think that this problem is regarding PCB, you can easily replace it with new PCB. If you don’t have experience in working on hardware, you can seek professional help. But I suggest you to replace the PCB of the drive. This will save your money if you are planning to buy a new hard drive and then getting all the data transferred. Also the refrigerator method to cool down the PCB might bring back your hard drive to life. But it won’t survive more that 3 to 4 months.

I suggest that you check for the compatibility of firmware of hard drive. There is a huge difference in functioning of Windows XP and Windows 7. The firmware that was compatible with Windows XP may not be compatible with Windows 7. So you can update the firmware and see if it works.