Hard Drive issue!!! HELP

[Alex3176]

Hello, I would like to upgrade to Windows 10. I got the HP without its hard drive. When i hook up my new hard drive to format it on my GNOME partition usb, the hard drive is not detected. I also went in the BIOS and all that is detected is the 16 GB mSATA Solid State Drive cache. So I took the hard drive and hooked it up too my tower and it was detected on Disk Managment. Can it be an issue with the SATA cable? The Motherboard? If not can I do something within the BIOS? 

[DGroves]

before you install the ssd and clone the drive you need to enter the bios or the intel RST program and disable the mSATA "Cache Module"

then power down and remove the mSATA module from the system, then power up and confirm the system boots normally

the intel cache driver redirects the read/writes through the slower mSATA module and if not disabled before you remove the cache module the system will not boot once the module is removed

once the cache module is removed, you can then install the SSD drive and clone the drives

[Alex3176]

I am installing a HDD not an SSD, and how and where do i go to disable the mCache. If you can give me a step by step process. Thank you so much

[DGroves]

if you are adding or replacing with a larger mech drive and not a ssd then nothing needs to be done reguarding the mCACHE module

as to where/how to remove it please refer to the hp documentation for your model computer

[Alex3176]

So if it is not reading my HDD on the BIOS, does a reset on the BIOS help. Or do you think the problem is internal with with SATA cable 

[DGroves]

your not being clear about what you want to do and what you have done

1. does the drive boot in the system it came in? if not is the drive seen in that systems bios?

2. the system the drive came in, this is the one with the showing the cache module option in the bios?

if so, then you should have a option to disable the cache module. if no option to disable then it's done through intel RST program in windows 

3. you can manually remove the cache module from the system, but then any drive which has the cach module driver installed will no longer boot as the cache driver loads before windows, and redirects all read/writes through the cache module which is now missing.

to force a removal of the drive that has a cach driver installed, you can try the linux program "DBAN" that can be run from a self booting  cd disk/usb key

[Alex3176]

For your question, no the drive is not seen in the system bios only the cache module

[DGroves]

do you have another power connector to try connecting to the drive ? does it spin up?

also check a diffrent sata port and also a diffrent sata cable

it's possible the sata port(s) on the motherboard  are bad