Elite 8200 SFF not recognize 2 tb HD as 2nd drive.

[Lukeskywelder]

I bought a refurbished HP Elite 8200 SFF with a 2 Tb hard drive, 8 Gb RAM, now running Windows 10 Pro build 1807. It had a port on the mother board for a 2nd SATA drive, labeled SATA1 (existing primary drive is on SATA0). I wanted to install as a 2nd HD a 2 Tb SATA drive so I put it in an available bay and connected the 2 tb HD to a SATA cable and the other end in the SATA1 port on the MB. Connected the power cable. Booted and went into BIOS but BIOS not recognize the 2nd drive. I booted into Windows 10 Pro, called up computer management, selected Storage and Disk management but no drive 1 listed excep my external 1 Tb drive.

I disconnected the 2 Tb 2nd HD and connected a smaller 250 Gb drive and still no recognition. I connected the 2 Tb drive I am trying to install to my previous Dell Vostro 200 and booted off that HD, so it is working, and copied my user created files on to the external drive.

I text chated with a HP support person but he insisted that the HP Elite 8200 SFF is not able to recognize hard drives any greater than 500 Gb, even though the original primary drive is 2 Tb and running quite fine and the HP Quick Spec sheet (copyright 2012) says this unit can be ordered with a 1 Tb drive.

Several questions: Why is the BIOS of this HP Elite not recognizing the 2nd 2 Tb hard drive? Is the BIOS limited to reading only up to 1 Tb drives whether a single primary drive or between 2 drives? (500 Gb each).

Windows 10 would be able to handle 4 Tb between 2 hard drives but the BIOS has to recognize the second drive first before the OS could see it. Is it possible to tweak the BIOS to get it to read a second 2 Tb HD. Do I have to upgrade the BIOS? I appreciate any input on this. Thank you.

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

HP specs only list 1TB as the max offical drive size it's possible that your 2TB drive may only function as a 1TB drive.

check disk manager for the size it shows. and if it shows 2TB, it's possible that when you try copying more than 1TB the drive will overwrite existing data (or it may work as a 2TB drive

it's remotely possible that the 2TB driv is causing the controller to refuse to see any more drives

if possible, get a small drive (under 1TB) and connect it to sata 0 then see if it shows in bios, if so the connect 2tb drive to SATA 1 and again check bios, if seen then swap the drives and see if when 2TB dtive is port 0 will it see drive on port 1

[Lukeskywelder]

I do not know who marked this as resolved. It was not me. I do not consider it as having been solved. I have not had a chance to try the recommendations made and I am still wanting input from others.

DGroves. I appreciate your reply. There may be some truth to it. I am aware that there is such a thing as fake SD card capacities where unscrupulous sellers obtain low capacity SD cards and either they or those that are their suppliers change the registry of a SD card to report a capacity greater than it is capable. I was a victim of that and it did result in overwritten data. I do not know if this a similar scheme. The advertisement said this was a manufacterer refurbished computer. I could not get the HP chat support person to confirm this from the serial number. That HP chat operator also said the Elite 8200 SFF could only read hard drives up to 500 Gb when the spec sheet he referred to said this computer could be ordered with a 1 Tb hard drive on the next page after the one he referred to. Obviously did not know what he was talking about or was just trying to put me off.

Would a limitation of hard drive capacity be a matter of the BIOS configuration? Would a BIOS update help with that? That is the subject of another post of mine.

Again, thank you for replying.

[DGroves]

to try to explane hard drive controllers and their operation/quirks would take several pages on this forum

bottom line, some controllers will work with larger drives than what the mfgr tested, some will not. It really depends on the hardware and bios on the system.  What happens when you try larger drives can range from does not work, to works, to semi working weirdly

SD cards that are mismarked in size are another matter, there the person programs in a larger size in the SD cards controller so the computer reads in the fake size  it has nothing to do wih the Hard Drive controller/Bios as most memory cards are accessed over the USB bus and not the SATA/SAS ports, and all that happens with mismarked cards is that instead of holding 32GB it will stop at 16GB  and other than the size error the card will operate normally 

[Lukeskywelder]

@DGroves the problem got resolved. Both BIOS and Disk Management recognized the smaller 250 GB SATA HDD in SATA-1 port.

I thank you for your good input.

[adrianTNT]

I use 4TB Wd Red in HP 8200 SFF (i7 CPU) for almost a year. It works perfectly.