Trouble installing secondary 3TB WD 30EZRX drive with A75M-ITX and Windows 8 64-bit

[jguthmann]

I just put together a small AMD-based HTPC and I'm having trouble getting the BIOS to properly recognize the 3TB WD 30EZRX drive. Windows 8 64 is installed on a Samsung 840 series 256GB hard drive and will remain there. I upgraded the BIOS to 1.60 after experiencing constant rebooting in conjunction with Windows 8. I'm currently operating within IDE mode (I tried switching to AHCI by changing the necessary registry settings and switching to AHCI mode but kept getting blue screens and reboots). The WD is recognized by the board but is designated PATA and shows 0.0 GB as its capacity. It does not indicate the serial number and says it does not support S.M.A.R.T. The drive does not show up in Windows, neither within Explorer nor within the Manage Computer panels. I'm at a loss. Is the drive bad? Is the board bad? Is configuration wrong? Do I need additional drivers?

[parsec]

Any drive larger than 2TB will not be useable until you run this utility from your board's download page:

ASRock 3TB+ Unlocker Utility ver:1.0

But, that is the Window 7 version, the Windows 8 version is 1.1. Check the download pages of other AMD boards similar to yours that have a Windows 8 driver/utility listing.

You may have another issues that is aggravating the situation, being in IDE mode. People with your problem usually report that the drive is seen in Windows, but they cannot access all its capacity. That is likely related to being in IDE mode, given the way the BIOS cannot communicate with the drive correctly (no SMART, etc.) Your SSD's performance is also diminished by not using AHCI mode. Windows 8 has an AHCI driver that would work fine with your drives, is IDE the default SATA mode for your board's BIOS?

You really should reinstall Windows 8 in AHCI mode, given the problems you are having.