Personal computing discussed

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Helen269
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New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 8:58 am

I have an old PC that was bought around the early 2000s and I now need to replace my HD because of S.M.A.R.T. warnings of imminent failure.

I've just bought a brand new 1TB Western Digital Sata III drive but when I fitted it and turned on the PC I just got a blank screen. There was no display signal coming through to the monitor at all.

I put my old drive back in and the display worked fine so it wasn't that anything got disloged during fitting.

Before I take it back, would I be right in thinking that my old motherboard just can't deal with such a new drive? Or is there something I can do to make it work?

Many thanks.
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 9:23 am

SATA drives and controllers are supposed to be backward compatible (i.e. you should be able to "mix and match" freely), but there were indeed some early SATA 1 controllers which did not work properly with SATA 2/3 drives. Some SATA 2/3 drives had a jumper you could install to force the drive to work in legacy SATA 1 mode only, but I don't think current drives have this any more.

It is possible that the drive is simply defective in a way that is causing your BIOS to hang during drive detection. You could check this if you have access to another system to try the drive in.
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Helen269
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 9:45 am

I will be trying it in another PC later so that might shed some light on things.
There are jumper pins on it but no actual jumpers or diagrams or instructions.
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 9:52 am

Helen269 wrote:
I will be trying it in another PC later so that might shed some light on things.
There are jumper pins on it but no actual jumpers or diagrams or instructions.

Yeah, unless you can find jumper documentation for your specific drive, don't mess with those.
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Helen269
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 12:17 pm

Ok, so we tried it in a second machine with the same result. No video output. The old hard drive is sata2 so would a sata2 compatible pc, albeit an old one, be ok with a sata3 drive?
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 3:39 pm

Are you swapping it in for the system drive? If so, then the system is not going to start since there's no operating system.

You should still see a POST/BIOS screen before it goes blank though. Do you get any beeps? Can you get into the BIOS by repeatedly pressing Del (or on some systems F10) when powering the system up?
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mikewinddale
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 4:25 pm

As another commenter said, you should definitely still be getting the POST screen, and you should be able to go into the BIOS setup and such. If you're not even getting that, then the drive is probably dead, or else there's something wrong with your motherboard.

Whenever you are installing or configuring a new hard drive, I would always suggest using an external USB-SATA enclosure, such as: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-fre ... l+usb+sata

It makes it easy to configure and format the drive without having to keep cracking your computer open and messing with the internals. Get a computer with a working Windows or Linux installation, plug in the new drive with the USB enclosure, and make sure it is detected and that the full capacity is available, without having to physically crack any computers open.

You could also use the GParted version of Linux, running from USB. Install an ISO of GParted to a USB flash drive and boot from that. Then, check the SATA drive from within GParted. You'll need to download an ISO of GParted, as well as an ISO burner to burn the ISO to a flash drive.

It's not essential to do all this business with an external USB-SATA enclosure, but I personally find that it makes life easier.

And if you have two USB enclosures, then you can put the old, almost dead drive in one and the brand new drive in the other, and use Acronis True Image or Macrium Reflect Free to clone one drive to the other drive. That way, the brand new drive will have an exact clone of the old drive. Now that the new drive is ready and working, you can remove it from the USB enclosure and install it in the conventional, internal SATA port.

Again, you can do this without any USB enclosures. But I always find it is easier to do hard drive clones using USB, because that way, you can plug-and-play and troubleshoot more easily.
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 6:20 pm

Helen269 wrote:
Ok, so we tried it in a second machine with the same result. No video output. The old hard drive is sata2 so would a sata2 compatible pc, albeit an old one, be ok with a sata3 drive?


Theoretically yes. However it may require a BIOS update from the SATA-3 era for this to work. ~ 2009
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Helen269
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 6:54 pm

Both of our PCs are pre-2009 and I'm not happy about the idea of updating my BIOS as that is a risky operation, I could easily brick the whole pc if something goes wrong. But I think legacy system is the problem. In both, there is no video signal at all - the monitor power light stays orange yet works fine with the old sata2 drive back in.
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 8:20 pm

How much pre-2009? I don't think I've had problems recognizing SATA-3 drives on anything made after 2006 or so.

The fact that the old drive was SATA-2 says that the motherboard probably doesn't have the SATA compatibility issues that a lot of early motherboards had, so this is pointing more towards a defective drive that is somehow preventing the system from POSTing, rather than a compatibility issue. Unless you can try it on a newer system to rule that in/out, I'd return it.
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Helen269
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 11:08 pm

Yeah, further reading suggests it should work but not as fast as it could . We're going to return it and see what a replacement can do. Stay tuned.....
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Sun Sep 10, 2017 11:32 pm

Helen269 wrote:
Both of our PCs are pre-2009 and I'm not happy about the idea of updating my BIOS as that is a risky operation, I could easily brick the whole pc if something goes wrong.

I can't count the number of bios/uefi flashes I've had go wrong on one hand. Honestly, I'm not even sure if it'd get one finger.

Unless you've got seriously crappy equipment or power problems it's not even worth worrying about.
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Mon Sep 11, 2017 1:29 am

I've had some dodgy BIOS upgrades where the floppy wouldn't read or the USB ports just disappeared in the middle of it.

The last chipsets I had to use a jumper or IBM Feature Tool on to set SATA-II drives as SATA-I were VIA using the VT8237 Southbridge for socket 754 and 939 for AGP. Generally their 939 chipsets for PCIe used the SATA-II capable VT8251 Southbridge instead. Though for some reason most of their chipsets for P4 used the VT8237, even the PCIe ones from 2006.
 
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Mon Sep 11, 2017 2:28 am

Helen269 wrote:
I have an old PC that was bought around the early 2000s and I now need to replace my HD because of S.M.A.R.T. warnings of imminent failure.

I've just bought a brand new 1TB Western Digital Sata III drive but when I fitted it and turned on the PC I just got a blank screen. There was no display signal coming through to the monitor at all.

I put my old drive back in and the display worked fine so it wasn't that anything got disloged during fitting.

Before I take it back, would I be right in thinking that my old motherboard just can't deal with such a new drive? Or is there something I can do to make it work?

Many thanks.


If you can borrow a SATA cable connect the new HD with the old one in place.
Boot up-go to disc management-see if you can initialize new drive.
If that works you could possibly clone old drive to new-unless you want to do a clean install...................................
 
Helen269
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Re: New Sata 3 drive = blank screen

Mon Sep 11, 2017 10:34 am

This can be marked as solved. We took the drive back, got it changed and the replacement is now having Windows put on it. Thanks, everyone, for all your help.

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