2020 SSD's not recognized Pre-Dell M17R1

I have the black laptop w the two drive drawers on the side, what could be easier? supposedly one could even hot-swap 2.5" SATA drives here?

I inherited this machine from my gamer brother in law who probly paid a premium for this machine new in 2008 / 09.

I recently upgraded / maxxed out RAM @ 8gb.

I am running MX Linux19.1

Bios is the final W841.B10

It came w Seagate 160gb HDD, recently I bought 2 ssd's : Silicon Power 256gb and AData 240 but....

Nether of these drives are recognized by either bios or system info

HELP / WHAT TO DO?

Thx

 

Is your BIOS set to RAID or AHCI? Maybe it's just something simple like that.

 

RAID is disabled. Enable / Disable = pretty much only options unless I enable RAID.

*** The memory doesnt show up in bios but does show up in "Quick System Info" (inxi) ... scroll to end

Will maybe look into rolling back bios? I think this W841.B10 may have been a beta and was possibly dropped?

Machine was built by Alienware around / but before the time the company was sold to Dell. It has Alienware s/n but no Dell service tag.

Code:

System:    Host: rrhobbs-mx-alienware Kernel: 4.19.0-6-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
           v: 8.3.0
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-6-amd64
           root=UUID=cca20f14-2b90-4644-8efe-abc6a3d4ab05 ro quiet splash
           Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 tk: Gtk 3.24.5 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0
           Distro: MX-19.1_x64 patito feo October 21  2019 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Machine:   Type: Kvm System: alienware product: Alienware M17 v: W841.B10 serial: <filter>
           Mobo: alienware model: alienware v: alienware serial: <filter> BIOS: Intel
           v: W841.B10 date: 10/14/2008
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 17.8 Wh condition: 17.8/97.7 Wh (18%) volts: 16.5/14.8
           model: W840 W8406450 type: Unknown serial: <filter> status: Full
           Device-1: hid-00:1f:20:fd:98:41-battery model: Bluetooth Mouse M336/M337/M535
           serial: N/A charge: N/A status: Full
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo P8400 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Penryn
           family: 6 model-id: 17 (23) stepping: 6 microcode: 60F L2 cache: 3072 KiB
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 9044
           Speed: 1857 MHz min/max: 1600/2266 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1857 2: 1950
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Split huge pages
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: EPT disabled
           Type: mds status: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode; SMT disabled
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
           Type: spec_store_bypass status: Vulnerable
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD RV670/M88 [Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2] vendor: Rioworks driver: radeon
           v: kernel bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 1002:9509
           Device-2: AMD RV670/M88 [Mobility Radeon HD 3870 X2] vendor: Rioworks driver: radeon
           v: kernel bus ID: 06:00.0 chip ID: 1002:9509
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: radeon resolution: 1440x900~60Hz
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RV670 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.19.0-6-amd64 LLVM 7.0.1)
           v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio vendor: Rioworks driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
           bus ID: 00:1b.0 chip ID: 8086:293e
           Device-2: AMD RV670/680 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 3690/3800 Series] vendor: Rioworks
           driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 06:00.1 chip ID: 1002:aa18
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-6-amd64
Network:   Device-1: Marvell 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Rioworks driver: sky2
           v: 1.30 port: 4000 bus ID: 08:00.0 chip ID: 11ab:4363
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Device-2: Realtek RTL8187SE Wireless LAN driver: rtl818x_pci v: kernel port: 5000
           bus ID: 09:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8199
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 149.05 GiB used: 11.27 GiB (7.6%)
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST9160411ASG size: 149.05 GiB block size:
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter>
           rev: DE14 scheme: MBR
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: 147.02 GiB size: 143.71 GiB (97.75%) used: 11.27 GiB (7.8%)
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60)
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/sda2
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 60.0 C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
           GPU: device: radeon temp: 65 C device: radeon temp: 69 C
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list
           1: deb http://debian.mirror.globo.tech/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list
           1: deb http://debian.mirror.globo.tech/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
           1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list
           1: deb http://mx-linux-packages.mirror.globo.tech/mx/repo/ buster main non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/skype-stable.list
           1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.skype.com/deb stable main
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list
Info:      Processes: 228 Uptime: 12m Memory: 7.79 GiB used: 1.89 GiB (24.2%) Init: SysVinit
           v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: bash v: 5.0.3
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36

 

Maybe those SSDs dont like that your laptop only has SATA2 instead of SATA3?
Have you tried them in any other laptop/desktop?

 

Thanks @senso / Before I bought the drives I checked; all versions of SATA are *supposed* to be 100% backward compatible, the only caveat is you are going to get SATA3 speed in a SATA system...

I havent tried them in any other systems; I had actually bought one of the drives to go in an old Dell N-5010 laptop. When I saw the Alien had the easy swap drawers I decided to put both in the Alien.

The N-5010 HDD is buried in the chassis; you have to to pull off all kinds of pieces to get to it: https://t.ly/L1iY (youtube teardown) .... I have done it, but....