My G53SX-A1 Issue (Letter to ASUS)

So I recently came across with an issue regarding placing a secondary hard drive on my Asus G53SX-XT1. I did send a letter to ASUS for some help but I wanted to also share it here to see if anyone can help me with this issue.

The letter was the following:

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[Problem Description]
Hello there,
I recently come unto a problem with my G53SX-XT1 Asus Notebook.
I have installed a second Hard Drive in the additional Hard Drive Slot. Now the thing is, the drive seems to not be recognized at all by the computer (it is at the moment already inserted into the computer).

Now my question is, are there any suggestions or steps that I could follow so that the secondary Hard Drive is readable by the computer. So far everything is just as normal (Except for the fact that I did in fact mess up the LEDs on the keyboard as for some reason once I reconnected the keyboard they just seemed to have failed working, but I digress as I take responsibility for that happening)

Anyways, yeah, the hard drive is not being identified as it being connected, any help would be highly appreciated.

Some notes about the Hard Drive.
1) Western Digital 320 GB Scorpio Black SATA 3 Gb/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive - WD3200BEKT

2) It is from an older laptop that I own, so it has Win7 32-bit Installed (I would believe this is the reason it is not recognized, but the hard drive is not even recognized in the Start Up Menu (when you press F2 when booting the computer)

I will continue searching online for a fix for this, but regardless I would appreciate any help you might be able to provide for me in this case.

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Thanks at anyone here who would be able to help (and providing such help of course)

[Edit it is an XT1, not and A1]

 

Have you properly connected the SATA data and power cables? Is the drive seen by the BIOS?

 

I will check, as far as I'm concerned it is all properly connected, and no, the drive is not seen in the BIOS, I will check right now again and report back.

 

As Sarge said, check BIOS, if it is not seen there, try swapping the 2 drives.
Also try resetting the BIOS to default settings

 

I will try that in a moment, because yeah, the drive is most definitely connected properly.

 

It's been a while since I played w/ swapping hard-drives on a PC, but the first thing that came to mind are there still jumpers that need to be set on the drives? If you pulled a 'master' drive from another machine and put it on the same controller as the existing 'master', that could cause problems. One drive may need to be set as a 'slave' by tweaking the position of the jumpers.

 

The days of PATA drives and jumpers are long gone, mate.

 

Checking the BIOS as others said will be a definite answer to whether it's connected properly. Some people don't clamp the cables tightly enough, or put the cables in the wrong way or wrong direction.

If the BIOS detects it, go into Disk Management (from Computer Management, do a search from start button) and you may have to assign a drive letter and/or format the drive. That's what I had to do with my SSD. I suggest you uncheck the "compressed drive" option if you do have to format the drive.

 

I should additionally note that you can probably bypass the BIOS and just go straight into Disk Management. If no drive is detected there, it definitely won't be detected in the BIOS too.

 

And not a moment too soon. I always hated those ribbon cables that would become stiff as a rock after a couple of years. Not to mention changing jumpers on drives that did not have clear descriptions for their settings. Ugh!

To the OP, make sure the second drive is recognized in the BIOS. If it is, go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and see if the drive partitions have drive letters assigned.

If the drive is not recognized in the BIOS, take the laptop apart and make sure everything is seated properly.

 

So At this point I have indeed made sure that the Hard Drives are seating properly.

I was wondering if the Hard Drive was the faulty one so I exchanged positions of the 2 HDs. Once I did this, the older HD was read as it was in the primary compartment and the HD that came with the notebook was not being read.

This has led me to assume that the Bay is the faulty. The only thing that I have not been able to do is reset the BIOS as I have no idea how to do such thing.

Other than that I believe I might have gotten a faulty connection? Any other suggestions would help but I have pretty much given up til now.

 

You might want to check the bios to see if the second drive's slot is "locked". It's a setting in your bios under I/O security, I think. If the setting is on "lock", the second hdd port is disabled.

 

So yeah...I am now almost 100% positive it is a faulty bay, everything that has been mentioned so far is placed positively setting in the BIOS are what they should be and still nothing. I will have to check up with ASUS what's up I guess due to the fact that I live in El Salvador so there are no legit shops shops that handle ASUS Notebooks.

The only thing I'm not looking forward is the Customer Support as I can't imagine it being very efficient.

 

Yeah. Their customer support is bad. I called to find out about the extended warranty. Each person gave me a different number to call and opened up a freaking case file just for my inquiry, and then one person put me on hold to redirect my call to the "warranty department"; when the guy picked up, he said there isn't a warranty department and that it was the motherboard department.
In the end, I didn't get any information on the warranty. But I *did* have to dial multiple non-toll-free numbers.

 

@RohitK

You can contact the Asus EStore to inquire about and/or purchase Extended Warranty packs for notebooks.

Service Case # 1582883 if you call in.

 

Where did you buy your notebook?