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I was trying to add a 6TB WD Red Hard Drive as external storage, but my Ubuntu (18.04.4) could not detect this drive when I plugged it in. I have some confusion about the hardware, so that I used Ubuntu live CD installation disk to format this disk. This 6TB disk was connected to SATA0 of the motherboard (coming with HP Compaq 8000 Elite CMT PC desktop).

The problem is the Live CD could not detect the hard drive before I can format it with GParted (2TB HDD was fine without any problem!) with this message:

No disk drive was detected. If you know the name of the driver needed by your disk drive, you can select it from the list.

Driver needed for your disk drive:
        continue with no disk drive
        login to iSCSI targets
        3w-9xxx
        3w-sas
        3w-xxxx
        ...

I spent some time searching for a solution, turning out that it seems no discussion exactly matching my case except some information that may be related.

1) Possible BIOS setup for the SATA ports, Tested all the 5 ports with the last one as eSATA. None worked.

2) The SATA emulation mode as "IDE/RIAD/ACHI", and I have tried all of them. None worked with the same message.

3) The connection cable may be wrong but I have tried all the ports, and 2TB HDD was always fine without any itch.

What is this problem, and what's the solution? Thanks a lot!

Edited: Because I could not comment any more, added response to heynnema's question here. I do not know how to enable this specific disk to BIOS, although I enabled the external HD drive from the BIOS pull-down menu. My liveDVD is Ubuntu18.04 and, output of sudo dmidecode -s bios-version : 786G7 v01.02

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  • With a 6TB drive, you first have to lay down a fresh GPT partition table (this will wipe the drive) using gparted, then create ext4 or ntfs partitions.
    – heynnema
    Apr 12, 2020 at 18:01
  • The OP states the drive is not detected so they can't use gparted. Apr 12, 2020 at 19:14
  • @heynnema Thanks, the drive was even not detected at first.
    – Yifangt
    Apr 13, 2020 at 14:37
  • re: "the drive was even not detected at first"... did it show up later? Are you connecting this drive internally via a SATA port, or externally via USB?
    – heynnema
    Apr 13, 2020 at 19:35
  • No, it never showed up. It was internally connected via a SATA port. I have tried all the regular SATA ports (marked with 1,2,3) and the eSATA port. Thanks! @heynnema
    – Yifangt
    Apr 14, 2020 at 18:35

1 Answer 1

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Your BIOS is outdated at v1.02. A newer BIOS may, or may not, fix your problem with the 6TB HDD.

Note: Perform data backups before any BIOS update.

Note: Update the BIOS at your own risk.

The latest BIOS is 1.14 (or 1.07, depending on how you interpret the HP-ez). See (you must select the Windows 7 64-bit OS):

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-compaq-8000-elite-convertible-minitower-pc/4065889

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Software-and-How-To-Questions/No-BIOS-Updates/td-p/6650782

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp73501-74000/sp73578.exe

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