2nd 3.5 internal HD recognition

I have a DELL Optiplex 980 Tower using Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS. It has a place for an extra HD where I installed a used 2TB SATA internal HD which was tested and functional. There was already a plug for power and I had to get a SATA Data Cable which I plugged into one of 2 extra receptacles in the motherboard to connect with the HD. When I boot up the system, the new HD is not recognized and I need help in what to do next. Is there something I need to change in the computer system settings or is there something in the Ubuntu MATE OS that needs attention? Or both? Or something else? I have little experience using the terminal.
Thanks for any help to resolve this.
~ Loqi

Hello Loqi,
Do you know if it has a MBR? Any partition or logical volume? Any file system in it?
If it's a brand new, empty disk you might need to set it up and format it before you can use it.

If you're not sure you can take a look in Gparted or in Disks.
('Applications', 'System Tools','GParted, or 'System', 'Preferences', 'Hardware', 'Disks').

Regards from Herman

Hello Herman,
The trouble is, since the disk is not recognized, I can't find out what it contains. The disk was given to me by a friend who no longer needed it. It is a disk with an old Ubuntu OS on it which will boot up if I exchange the disk with my current OS disk (Ubuntu Mate 18.04). I suppose I could format the drive but to do that it needs to be recognized.
It was not clear to me how I would look in Gparted or in Disks. I did get to look in Disks by opening the Control Center and clicking on "Disks" but that only gave me information about my boot HD and CD/DVD drive.
Any suggestions?
Thanks, Loqi

Hello Loqi,
Don't format it if there's anything on it you want.
If you can't 'see' it in Disks or GParted it sounds to me like a hardware problem and maybe you should (a) recheck your connections, (b) try it in another machine, such as your friend's whose machine it was last working in.

All the computers I have ever worked on are always able to detect a new disk automatically on boot up without needing to do anything in the BIOS. I do have an old Windows 98 computer that still works believe it or not, it came with a 6GB laptop hard drive and had a whopping 128mb of RAM! I upgraded it to 256MB. I used to dual boot Windows 98 and Ubuntu Warty Warthog in it. (There wasn't much room left for any files though). The BIOS on that old motherboard can't handle a hard drive larger than 20GB, that was called a 'BIOS hard drive size limit', but I don't think computers nowadays have those limits, unless it's a pretty old machine.

Hello Herman,

What I've done is the following:

  1. retained the plug that gives power to the HD and
  2. unplugged the SATA data cable from the motherboard and plugged it into an adapter cable with a USB plug at the other end.
    In other words, I've converted the disk into an external HD I can plug into a USB port.

When I did that the system recognized the disk and I have access to all the data on the disk.
The trouble is that I don't want to have a cord sticking out of the computer and I need to keep the cover off and expose the inside of the computer. I would rather have the computer do this without the USB connection.
Since there seems to be no problem with the disk itself and so I assume for some reason the SATA data cable when plugged into the motherboard is not making a connection to where the computer can have access to the disk. I looked at the system configuration with the disk plugged into the motherboard and again with the disk totally unplugged. I could not find any difference between the two. Any suggestions?

Thanks Herman, ~ Loqi

Hello Loqi,
This is more of a hardware question but I would try unplugging the sata cable from the motherboard and inspecting both ends of the cable and the motherboard socket if you can see it for any visible damage or debris which could be interfering with the contact surfaces. Maybe try blowing them out with some compressed air if you have any. If your motherboard has more sata ports, you might try a different sata port. You could also try swapping sata cables between this drive and your other drive to try to identify if one cable or the other might be faulty.
Regards from Herman :slight_smile:

1 Like

Hello Herman,

Things are moving along. There are 4 SATA ports on the motherboard, 2 colored and 2 white. The white ones weren't used and when I used one of them for the 2nd HD nothing happened, as I already reported before. The main HD and the CD/DVD drive were connected to the two colored ports. For my next step I unplugged the SATA cable of the CD/DVD drive and plugged the SATA cable of the 2nd HD into that port. When I booted up, Eureka! the drive showed itself in full colors, and I had full access to all the files.

I had plugged the SATA cable of the CD/DVD drive into one of the white ports but that didn't work. The CD/DVD drive is unavailable to me but that isn't such a big deal these days. Do you have any suggestions as to how to activate those two white SATA ports?

Thanks,
~ Loqi

Hello Loqi,

Well done! That's good news that you have your hard drive working.
I have never seen or heard of white sata ports on a motherboard before, all the sata ports I have ever seen are black ones.
You should be able to do an internet search for your motherboard make and model number and download your motherboard manual in pdf format. The motherboard manual will contain a lot of useful information about your motherboard and you'll find it very useful. I always like to get the manuals for all of things I buy and read them right through. I has saved me a lot of money over the years and helped me get a lot more fun out of my stuff.

If you can see your motherboard's brand and model name by looking in your computer case with a light that would be one way of getting that information.

Another way is by using a command in your terminal like this one:

 sudo dmidecode -t baseboard 

Your motherboard manual should explain what those white sata ports are for and how to use them.
Regards from Herman :slight_smile:

You can buy a USB driven cd/dvd writer/reader from somewhere like Amazon or Wal-Mart for about $20 US dollars. Probably a much easier and cheaper option than messing with your motherboard for the amount of times you would need the cd/dvd drive these days.

Is it possible some of the SATA ports are disabled?

I looked at the user instructions for your computer and saw an option for enabling/disabling SATA/ATA drives. The manual is titled Dell OptiPlex 980 Desktop Service Manual-Desktop.

In the instruction pdf, starting on page 14 there are instructions for "Entering System Setup" (BIOS), then on the next page (p. 15) there is a "Drives" section which has a "Drives" category described as "Enables or disables the SATA or ATA drives connected to the system board".

2 Likes

To Herman:
I found the model number of the motherboard: 0D441T
Then tried to find a manual but without any luck.
Think I'll leave it there for now since things are sufficiently functional as far as I can tell.
Thanks for helping me get this far.
~ Loqi


To jymm
Thanks for your suggestion but I also have another computer with a CD/DVD drive which will offer me what I need when the time comes.


To bob:
In the SATA Operation box, the "RAID On" option was checked.
When I clicked on the "RAID Autodetect / ATA" option I got the following message:

SATA Operation is being chamged!
Attention! Changing this setting may prevent your operating system from booting or require a reinstall.
Are you sure you would like to continue? YES / NO

I clicked the NO button as I didn't want to take the chance. The problem was basically with only two of the SATA drive ports on the motherboard.

I'm wondering: would it be a good idea to load the BIOS Defaults, or might that change critical settings?

Sorry bob, I didn't follow your instructions very well. Under the "Drives" heading I went to "SATA Operation" instead of going to the bottom "Drives" section. When I clicked on that, there were two unchecked of the four options relating to the two ports that hadn't worked so far. I clicked on the one for the port that the CD/DVD drive was plugged into to activate it. I rebooted the system and when I checked the settings, the system had found the CD/DVD drive. Glad I kept trying and many thanks to you and Herman for your help in fixing my problem.
~ Loqi

1 Like

hi you can do sudo update-grub with your running ubuntu than reboot and the new img is listed in grub maybe you must change in /etc/default/grub this line
GRUB_TIMEOUT=15 to see your grub menue