Can't connect drives with new Win10 install

[Trotter]

I decided to bite the bullet and go with Windows 10. I had initial problems with it but I am thinking that they were caused by a faulty SSD, pulled out a spare and so far so good as far as that goes.

The issue I am having is that if I hook my old drives back up the system can't boot. I am talking about another SSD and two mechanical drives. None of them have a MBR on them or are bootable themselves.

I am connecting them to a SATA expansion/RAID card that worked fine with my first couple of attempts with Win10. This time around I disconnected these drives when I installed Win10. Once it was installed and I had installed the drivers for the SATA card I hooked my old drives back up. On power up the SATA card's BIOS flashes up and shows the drives... and then nothing. My mobo's badge never pops up. Sometimes I can tap delete and get the message the it is going into setup but it never comes up. Two sticks of my RAM have LEDs that cycle according to the memory being used; these drop to a very slow speed when this happens.

If I disconnect these drives then Windows can boot just fine. I currently have one of these drives connected via USB and the system is fine with that.

I have cleared the CMOS multiple times, both with the drives connected and not connected but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I have also disconnected my front panel card reader/USB hub just in case... nada.

So... what's going on and how can I get my drives connected so that Win10 will run?

 

[carnageX]

If your splash screen isn't even showing, I don't that it's explicitly a Win10 issue. Sounds more like an issue with the board or expansion card.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Tried connecting them back one at a time to verify it's one of them causing the issue specifically?

Also, try booting into win10 first then connecting the drives while still booted. Right click on Start and open Disk Management, then go Action > Rescan Disks and see if they get picked up. If they do, I'd be curious if you can successfully reboot after that.

 

[Trotter]

If your splash screen isn't even showing, I don't that it's explicitly a Win10 issue. Sounds more like an issue with the board or expansion card.

Tried connecting them back one at a time to verify it's one of them causing the issue specifically?

Also, try booting into win10 first then connecting the drives while still booted. Right click on Start and open Disk Management, then go Action > Rescan Disks and see if they get picked up. If they do, I'd be curious if you can successfully reboot after that.

I got irritated at the whole thing and tore into it. I have connected all the drives directly to my mobo (huge pain in the *** BTW, even if my case is a mid tower). I ended up having to go into BIOS and disable the other drives from the boot menu but it is now working. My SATA card may be dying but I find that rather suspicious due to the timing and that it worked fine a couple of days ago when I kept everything connected during installation. Stranger things have happened, though.

It gripes my butt that my 240GB SSD may have croaked on me. I haven't even had it a year but it has a three year warranty on it so I should be good in the end.