Attempting to add an SSD to HP Envy 700-406

[finnfinite]

Hello! I recently was gifted a Samsung 850 EVO 250gb SSD. I've been attempting to use it alongside my standard 2TB HDD, and I cannot get them both to work.

I cloned my hard drive to the SSD, roughly 180 GB of space. 

I attached the SSD by SATA cable to the port labeled "SATA 1" inside my desktop, and attached the other cable (sorry, don't know the name of that one) that was already dangling free in my box.

I switched the BOIS boot, moving the SSD to the very top.

.....nothing happened. My computer continued to run completely off the HDD, showing me as having 2TB of space and showing no improvement in performance.

So, I shut everything down again, and this time I swapped the SATA cables - connecting the SSD to "SATA 0" and the HDD to "SATA 1". After booting, I discovered that my C: was now 233GB - the SSD. But.... the HDD doesn't appear to be anywhere I can access?

I'm an animator, so I often deal with very large files. I simply will not be able to handle a computer with only 233 GB of space, and upgrading to a bigger SSD is not feasible. What am I doing wrong that I can't use both at once?

[mdklassen]

Does your motherboard have 3 or 4 SATA ports?

Does your computer have a CD/DVD optical drive, that is working? 

This implies that the "data" cable between the motherboard and the drive is in working order.

Experiment: disconnect the "data" cable from that drive, and connect it to the 2TB HDD.

Reboot, and open the Windows "Device Manager", to see if Windows notices that the CD/DVD drive is not present, and that both disk-drives (SSD and HDD) are present.

[finnfinite]

My computer has four SATA ports - three labeled SATA 0-2, then a blue one with no label that the optical drive was plugged into.

I swapped the HDD to the blue port (leaving the optical unplugged), and now my computer is showing neither the HDD nor the optical. A breakdown of my three tries:

Try #1: HDD on SATA 0, SDD on SATA 1, Optical on Blue

>Result: HDD and Optical seen, SDD not

Try #2: SDD on SATA 0, HDD on SATA 1, Optical on Blue

> Result: SDD and Optical seen, HDD not

Try #3: SDD on SATA 0, HDD on Blue, Optical disconnected

>Result: SDD seen. 

All three tries, the three drives kept their respective cables and only changed where they were plugged into, so it can't be a faulty cable 😕

I am THOROUGHLY confused.

EDIT: Actually wait, it is registering the 2tb drive in the device manager. The name is there, but when I click on properties the 'volumes' tab is blank. How do I make it exist so that it can be written to?

[mdklassen · Accepted solution]

>Try #1: HDD on SATA 0, SDD on SATA 1, Optical on Blue

>Result: HDD and Optical seen, SDD not

> Try #2: SDD on SATA 0, HDD on SATA 1, Optical on Blue

> Result: SDD and Optical seen, HDD not

So, in both cases, anything connected to SATA 1 is not being seen.

Try HDD on SATA 0, and Optical on SATA 1.

Try HDD on SATA 1, and Optical on SATA 0.

>  EDIT: Actually wait, it is registering the 2tb drive in the device manager.

> The name is there, but when I click on properties the 'volumes' tab is blank.

> How do I make it exist so that it can be written to?

Right-mouse-button click on "Computer".

Choose "Manage".

Choose "Storage".

Choose "Disk Management".

Does the display show the 2TB drive?   If so, what is its "status"?  Uninitialized? Not partitioned?

[finnfinite]

That was exactly what I needed to look at! The device was set to offline for WHATEVER reason. I flipped it online and bam immediately recognized. Thank you so much for your help!