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10-14-2020 08:38 AM
I'm running Windows 10 Insider Edition on my customized, high-performance HP Z420v2 motherboard. I switched to AHCI only, was running RAID & AHCI. When I made this switch I was able to get three drives recognized by my motherboard, one of those drives being my Optical DVD/CD/Blu-ray player. I want to be able to run a fourth Solid State Drive but so far the fourth drive isn't recognized, it just doesn't show up either in the BIOS/Setup, Windows File Explorer, or in AOMEI Partition Master software. Is there a theoretical limit as to the number of drives the HP Z420v2 system will recognize, without moving to RAID? Thanks in advance.
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10-14-2020 01:53 PM
first of all please reset your bios back to Raid+AHCI, as this is the fastest, most compatible setting
AHCI is a subset of the raid module and raid extensions will only be called into play if you create and use a array
the number of SATA drives is only limited by number of sata ports you have in the system, this includes add in sata cards
m.2 style ssd's are only limited by the availability of x4 (or x2 if the ssd is SATA/AHCI based) pci-e slots on the motherboard
if a SATA ssd is not showing in the bios then it's one of the things listed below
bad sata cable,
bad/missing power connecter to drive or bad power supply that supplies to power to that sata pwr cable
bad SATA drive
drive is SAS not SATA for the data interface
M.2
bad m.2 carrier
M.2 carrier installed in pci-e slot that lacks x4/x2 data lines (not all x4 ss's will run at x2, check drive specs)
bad SSD
10-14-2020 01:53 PM
first of all please reset your bios back to Raid+AHCI, as this is the fastest, most compatible setting
AHCI is a subset of the raid module and raid extensions will only be called into play if you create and use a array
the number of SATA drives is only limited by number of sata ports you have in the system, this includes add in sata cards
m.2 style ssd's are only limited by the availability of x4 (or x2 if the ssd is SATA/AHCI based) pci-e slots on the motherboard
if a SATA ssd is not showing in the bios then it's one of the things listed below
bad sata cable,
bad/missing power connecter to drive or bad power supply that supplies to power to that sata pwr cable
bad SATA drive
drive is SAS not SATA for the data interface
M.2
bad m.2 carrier
M.2 carrier installed in pci-e slot that lacks x4/x2 data lines (not all x4 ss's will run at x2, check drive specs)
bad SSD
10-17-2020 05:45 AM
DGroves: thank you for your quick response and helpful information. I switched back and forth from AHCI to Raid + AHCI and it didn't seem to make any difference regarding the recognition of additional hard drives or benchmark scores. I have since been able to connect 3 internal SATA SSD's, one M.2 NVMe SSD on a PCIe adapter card, and the Optical drive. Somehow, by magic I guess the additional hard drives were recognized and operating well. The SATA data cable I was using seems to be working fine and the HP 1TB SATA drive it is connected to works well with a decent AS SSD benchmark. I'm still perplexed regarding where to place the three cards in the 6 slots. I need Slot 2 for the EVGA GTX 1080ti graphics card, Slot 4 for the PCIe adapter card, Slot 5 for the Soundblaster card. The PCIe Adapter card is right up against the wide EVGA graphics card. Since it has two fans the PCIe Adapter card restricts cooling so I may be forced to go with the ASUS 1080ti card, which uses a single Blower Type fan at the rear of the card. While this is an additional expense I didn't plan on I may not have a choice. Other than that, the system performs extremely well with knock-out benchmarks. The next system will be based on the HP Z440, which will allow me to boot directly from the M.2 NVMe SSD and use DDR4 RAM.