Newly installed DMS Cannot Detect Internal Hard Drive

[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...Well you're certainly welcome! It does look like the warranty route is your only option. If you contact them by email include a link to this thread.
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Did you play around with that Snipping Tool? FYI...Microsoft is set to stop supporting Windows 7 in Jan 2020. I plan to start building up a Win 10 HDD soon and transition to it. The good thing is all I'll have do is plug it in to the drive bay...this is a PIC of the drive bays that I put in this PC I built, the boot drive bay is separate from the bottom 4...the second one up from the bottom is the one I keep free and is the one I used to set the HDD up for the DMS.
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Good Luck on the return process...it should be straight forward.

[CPUTO]

Dead Eye, I can't thank you enough for all this help. You have been super! I can't get a peep out of the drive in the DMS no matter how close I listen. So, I'm going to turn to the warranty route with DVD Fab. All the best, my friend!

[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...I have an 8 TB WD Red and it is very quiet but I can still feel the vibration(...very slight) by putting my hand on top of the unit. During boot up I can hear the drive doing its 'SEEKS' as the controller from the DMS reads out the content of the drive...this would be true even if there was nothing on the drive except the MBR and the File Allocation Table(..or in the case of an NTFS file system, HPFS)...hell put your ear on it, if it is spun up you will hear it. If it isn't spinning in the DMS but works in your PC then I would say the the DMS is the problem because the drive isn't getting the command to spin up

It is quite possible that something came loose during shipping and handling, like an internal cable or something. File a warranty return and go through their process.

[CPUTO]

The drive "snaps" in and seats firmly. The door then closes fully. This drive is very quiet, I turned off the DMS switch and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Then I turned the switch back on while placing my hand flat on the top opf the unit, and I jiust can't feel or hear anything like the drive spinning up. However, when the drive is sitting in the adapter and not encased, it is quiet but perceptably spinning. Reading between the lines, I am guess that there is a hardware issue with the DMS and that I need to get a reaction from the DVD Fab folks. Make sense? Unless you have other thoughts. Thanks again!

[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...when you insert the drive...
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1) Does the door close fully?
2) With the drive installed and the server powered on can you lightly feel the top of the unit and determine that the drive is 'spun up'?

[Dead Eye]

I went through the manual for the server...other than using a USB to SATA bridge I think we got it covered since using a bridge setup is not the only way to set up a HDD. If Windows sees it and files can be written to it and read back then the drive is setup OK. This is a capture from pg. 49 of the users manual.
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[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...the drive appears to be setup OK...did you get the 'Initialize Disk' dialog before partitioning and formatting?
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I use a tool that comes with Win7 called 'Snipping Tool'...check your accessory folder...I pin it to the task bar. It freezes the screen then you drag and outline the section of the screen you want to capture. From there you save as a *.jpg to a folder of your choice, I created a folder called 'Snippets' and that is where I save them.
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[october262]

I think I follow. I also may have gotten better at my screen shots:-) Below is a screen shot taken before I did any reformatting. The drive label is G: Disk 3. The second shot is after formatting. I gave it a new volume name "Movies" so that we could see that it was not the same as in the first screen shot.



After Formatting:




I then inserted the formatted HDD per above into the DMS and got the same "DISK NOT DETECTED" message on the screen. Did I do it correctly? Thanks!

download the PDF guide for the dvdfab movie server, in it there are detailed instructions
on how to properly format your HDD if the MS refuses to detect it.

[CPUTO]

I think I follow. I also may have gotten better at my screen shots:-) Below is a screen shot taken before I did any reformatting. The drive label is G: Disk 3. The second shot is after formatting. I gave it a new volume name "Movies" so that we could see that it was not the same as in the first screen shot.



After Formatting:




I then inserted the formatted HDD per above into the DMS and got the same "DISK NOT DETECTED" message on the screen. Did I do it correctly? Thanks!

[Dead Eye]

The steps are...Initialize Disk > Create a Simple Volume using the entire Disk(GPT) > then a quick format. There are different right mouse button menus available depending on where you click. If you right click on the box that says Disk 0 you get different options than if you right click on the hashed area that shows the drive label, letter and size.
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[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...another thing, the Windows Explorer is not what you need to use to deal with 'NEW' disk. GOTO Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management.
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[CPUTO]

Dead Eye, you are impressive! I'm not particularly good a screen shotting, but the disk has been formatted, and the message in Disk Manager says:

"New Volume G:"
3725.90 GB NTFS
Health (Primary Partition)

So, now, I am going to switch off the DMS, install the HDD, and switch it on again. I hoped to see the new HDD when I went to Settings=>General=>System Maintenance=>Disk Manager on the DMS, and I got: "NO DISK DETECTED Please insert a SATA 3.5" disk drive to Movie Server first." So, I followed the "hard" rest instructions in the DMS manual: Turn off the DMS, insert paper clip into hole in back panel of DMS, keep inserted while turning on the DMS until the logo home screen appears. Got the little green Android man (standing up) whirring his antennae, and then the server home screen appeared. Went to Settings=>General=>System Maintenance=Disk Manager and got the same "NO DISK DETECTED... message. And when I insert a thumb drive into the USB slot in the DMS, it finds and reads it immediately. Now I have an "adapter" that holds my HDD and has a USB cable for attaching to my computer. I can try using thjis adapter and the USB port on the DMS to see if it will then see the HDD, but that is not a viable long term solution. I'm greatly appreciative of your truly impressive help, but I don;t know what else to try. Thanks!!

[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...this is the dialog box you should see. This computer I built has a 4 Bay SAT III back plane that is hot swappable, I inserted a 2 TB drive that I had cleaned some time ago. When I put it in a free bay so that I could capture the dialog box for this post I did not get the dialog until I launched the disk manager tool, but it did show up as a removable device.
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Until you deal with drive successfully within the Windows environment it is to early to say that the DMS is the culprit.

[Dead Eye]

CPUTO...within the Disk Manager program there is a 'Rescan Disk' function from the action menu...try that and give it some time(2 min.).

The first thing that has to be done is the disk has to be initialized. No other operation can be performed on the drive until it is initialized...if you don't get the prompt to initialize the disk it is FULL STOP!
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[CPUTO]

Dead Eye, I got through everything as you outlined it. Got the right drive, CLEAN acknowledged that it was successful. However, when I reintroduced the drive to Windows, Windows Explorer cannot find it to then partition and format. Interestingly, when I click on the desktop to "safely remove device," the drive shows up without a location designation, e.g., H: but it lets me safely eject it. I tried formatting it using disk manager, but it won't let me. I'm not sure what the options are, but I'm open to suggestions. The DMS could be the culprit here, but I don't know how to verify that short of buying another one to see if it works better and then returning the defective one.