A new internal hard drive shows up as "USB Drive" in My Computer

In BIOS, when I changed SATA mode from AHCI to ATA, the computer failed to boot.

Are you connecting, the drive when connected was tagged, and potentially the OS remembers the lable    Check device manager to see how it is reflected there.

If you are connecting the HDD using the adapter USB to SATA and you see the drive as external HDD, it means your PC work perfectly fine. You can see the HDD as internal only when you will connect it to the SATA port on the motherboard. Everything that goes over USB port, windows will treat it as peripheral. As I know the only way to map external storage as the internal drive should go through iSCSI service.

Windows 10 cannot run in ATA because you do not have installed required drivers (usually those drivers are installed during initial installation). You can play with the registry and starting windows in safe mode to install the drivers, but I am not sure will that be a solution for your issue.

The install activates/enables specific drivers either at a or ahci, tothe point Nikola made, if ahci was the active when the install occurred, there are at processes on line using regedit that you can enable the ATA's/IDE drivers...

well - if you connect a sata drive with an usb adaptor to an USB port - imo it is an USB drive - nothing wrong there - or did i miss something?

Nobus,

The drive was attached via the imaged USB to Sara adapter, then the drive was attached internally via a Sata connection, but still appears as a USB drive in the view posted.

I think, the drive guid is associated in Windows 10 and the icon, lable stuck.


Getting a list/expanded display if device manager whether the internal Sata port to which this is being connected is a USB based ....

You see a label "USB drive". A label. It is not windows saying "this is a USB drive". Someone labelled it "USB drive".
What is more interesting is that in your screenshot no colored bar that indicates drive space usage of that drive can be seen. Or did you manipulate the screenshot? Since this bar would show for any drive, there is something going on.

You should do a simple test: boot windows setup and see if windows setup sees the drives (pretend you wanted to install windows to that drive). See if windows setup reports the sizes correctly and what label it shows. Maybe repeat this test with other drives to see if their size or type makes a difference.

You are getting what you are supposed to get.   This drive is "speaking" the SCSI instruction set over physical USB interface due to the protocol/interface converter in the cable.

If you want a native SATA disk, you're just going to have to crack open the case and hook it up over a SATA cable (that you MAY have to solder to internal pins).

Finally got it working !
(1) I upgraded BIOS from V9 to V11.
(2) I connected the new 2TB HD directly to Motherboard using the data & power cable that were used for DVD Burner and now I see the new 2TB  in Disk Management.
 As to this SATA adapter goes, I found out that you have to attach a formatted HD for it to recognize that as HD. This is useless piece of junk.
 The whole purpose of using one of these is because you don't want to open up the computer and connect the HD to the motherboard directly.
 I am returning it.

Thanks.

You're welcome,

Excuse me ... but the correct answer is #42409146   -  It never would have worked unless the HDD was direct connect, as I wrote, and you will note this is what the author ended up doing.
" ... I  connected the new 2TB HD directly to Motherboard"


The advice in the MSFT article had nothing to do with the problem.
Write caching has nothing to do with the problem ... that doesn't even make sense that it could, since the write cache setting doesn't even come into play.

@David,
 
 I saw your posting.
 This is what happened:
 (1) I could not get " USB to SATA adapter" working and it is going back to AMAZON.
 (2) I could not get an internal SATA HD on any other SATA port on MB. The only SATA port that I was able to connect the HD was original SATA port (for existing HD) or SATA port for DVDROM.
 Looking back, upgrading BIOS may have not solved the problem.
 So I hooked up a new HD to original SATA port and hooked up DVDROM to its original slot on MB. it worked fine.
 Please let me know how I should change the point award.

The steps sglee followed based on Shaun's post confirmed that the SATA to USB does not work, and then ....
Potentially, like most of us, sglee may have continued to work the problem to find a solution to what should be working connecting a SATA drive via an adapter to a USB port.often, only after using such a setup to clone or other things and the length of time it takes, the next time, opening up a case and attaching directly becomes the preferred route... versus being averse to opening up the case...

I believe the awarded points should stand as they are. I and others effectively went to try an solve the SATA to USB adapter connected HD not displaying.....

There were two things that threw me off in this case.
(1) The brand new "external USB to SATA Adapter" (purchased from Amazon) failed to display the connected  hard drive, new or used, as  physical hard drive in DiskMgmt.msc or in My Computer. As I mentioned, I sent it back to Amazon.
(2) What really threw me off was the fact that none of existing  additional SATA ports on MB worked when I hooked up new or used HDs. Simply I have never seen a motherboard (inside this Dell PC) where I could not make HDs show up in My Computer or DiskMgmt.msc. It is very odd that the only two SATA ports that worked were the ones for C drive and DVDROM.
What I have seen is extremely odd. The bottom line is that I got the new HD hooked up to the same SATA port that old HD was using and installed OS from the scratch.

Oh, Dell, usually the additional sata ports have to be enabled, though you have to be careful to see whether these are RAID SATA ports. in which case they require additional drivers to function. .....

@Arnold,
 " sata ports have to be enabled" --> Yes I checked the BIOS and made sure they were all enabled.
 " see whether these are RAID SATA ports" --> The thought of RAID never occurred to me because it was a cheap DELL Inspiron 660 desktop PC and you really don't think RAID stuff on these kind of hardware, but who know... I will not know until I have that computer in service again.

rechecked, these seem straigh SATA ports. Dell to speed up boot, unused SATA are disable. When enabled the bootup process had each port "check" whether anything is connected to it. I think if all four ports are enabled would delay the bootup by an additional 10-20 seconds. The other issue deals with the stop on error setting, having unused SATA ports enable while the stop on all errors is selected will have the box on boot stop when the unused enabled SATA port sees nothing connected to it. Requireing the user to hit F1 or .... to proceed.
The other, often the default does not include power connectors, you may have to get a power Y cable to have two harddrives and a DVD/CD powered and connected or use the power from the SATA USB Adapter to power the second drive while it is connected to the MB SATA port....

Manual for the system can be seen at:
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-660/manuals

As I wrote, the correct answer is #42409146   - You need to direct attach to the SATA ports, and BIOS has nothing to do with it. (Which you later confirmed)