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General discussion

IBM Thinkcentre

Jan 25, 2015 10:21AM PST

Hello,
I have an IBM Thinkcentre 8173KVC. It detects IDE drives just fine. It won't detect the SATA hard drive. Is there a way SATA is disabled? The DVD drove works fine on the IDE. The SATA hard drive is not detected in the bios, or in windows setup. I tried different cables, different drives, etc. Please let me know of ways I can fix this.
Thanks,
Tanner

Discussion is locked

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What does specs offers?
Jan 25, 2015 10:38AM PST

Check and verify the manual or support website for your model#. Provided you have SATA ports, then enable them in the bios. I exclude any added SATA card. Depending on how your bios addressing this issue it maybe further enabled by using some "legacy" toggle or similar, wording varies from brand to brand. Also, any RAID setup may not support or is another area which may not support it. However, if you have XP as the OS, that isn't supported directly during an install, you need the "driver" during OS install, follows the <F6> prompt. If you have the factory install discs, then if SATA was part of the orginal setup, then I assume it should have been supported, etc.. Any other install you need to directly check whatver is being, since you didn't provide your full details in order to see what's what.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Agree with Willy
Jan 25, 2015 5:34PM PST

Looks like this is an oldie circa 2004 that came with a ball mouse. Some BIOS were "either/or" and not both IDE and SATA. Look at the BIOS setup for SATA options. The wording varied so I can't tell specifically what to look for. Some said "Legacy", some "Advanced", etc.

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Quick review
Jan 26, 2015 12:56AM PST

The specs offer it supports 1.5gb data transfer suggesting this is an old PC. Further, as Steven stated, older PCs tend to support one or the other, NOT both. Also, if you have an older OS, again if XP that too could come into play if the SATA drive is larger than 2.0gb, especially 3.0gb, etc. here problems arise even if newer OS like Vista. Please provide details as to what SATA drive is being installed and usually jumper it for the slower speed which can also be an issue being the mtrbd. is 1.5gb capable only.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Tell more.
Jan 26, 2015 2:24AM PST

While I could not find that model IBM the XP issue is so well done that we don't expect SATA drives to show unless it's in some IDE SATA EMULATION MODE but I can't tell which OS, what SIZE HDD and didn't find that IBM.

So as it stands, may be proper for the parts in play.
Bob

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Is this your PC?
Jan 26, 2015 3:05AM PST
IBM Thinkcentre 8173KVC User manual

It's a pdf from IBM so you need to open it with reader. It shows images of what are called IDE SATA ports. It also mentions a security setup that might make connected devices not visible. My guess is you must select to use either the IDE (40 pin connector) or the IDE SATA ports but cannot use both at the same time. The manual doesn't step through the BIOS setups but they shouldn't be that difficult to figure out. Good luck.
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From .PDF doc
Jan 27, 2015 4:38AM PST

That also requires some "setup s/w." to run from to address or access the bios I suppose, rather than directly. That doesn't surprise me on older IBM or Lenevo brands. -----Willy Happy