# How to disable hard drives in bios?



## envaanjaksa (Mar 24, 2017)

Hi!

I'm reinstalling Windows 7 on an Asus laptop to get rid of potential malware, and when I reboot from DVD I get the error message "More than one hard drive has been detected. Please remove additional hard drives to ensure... etc."

There are four hard drives in my computer. I enter BIOS -> Advanced -> SATA configuration which only shows the option of switching between IDE and AHCI. Where should I look to TEMPORARILY disable the three other hard drives? Or is there any other solution?


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## Oddba11 (May 13, 2011)

Personally, I open the case and disconnect the data cables. Then there is no chance of the drives being accessed.

As for disabling in the BIOS, you should be able to disable each individual port (ie: SATA0, SATA1, SATA2, etc.).


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## replay (Aug 13, 2003)

You have 4 hard drives in a asus LAPTOP?????
Maybe partitions???


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## flavallee (May 12, 2002)

> I'm reinstalling Windows 7 on an Asus *laptop*
> There are *four* hard drives in my computer


That's impossible for ANY laptop.
Yours either has 1 hard drive divided in 4 partitions or it has 2 hard drives divided into a total of 4 partitions.

What's the complete model number of your ASUS laptop?

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## envaanjaksa (Mar 24, 2017)

flavallee said:


> That's impossible for ANY laptop.
> Yours either has 1 hard drive divided in 4 partitions or it has 2 hard drives divided into a total of 4 partitions.
> 
> What's the complete model number of your ASUS laptop?
> ...


Yeah, they're most likely partitions. ASUS K73S


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## flavallee (May 12, 2002)

That model laptop does appear to come with *1* or *2* SATA hard drives with capacities of 320 GB or 500 GB or 640 GB or 750 GB.









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## envaanjaksa (Mar 24, 2017)

Oddba11 said:


> Personally, I open the case and disconnect the data cables. Then there is no chance of the drives being accessed.
> 
> As for disabling in the BIOS, you should be able to disable each individual port (ie: SATA0, SATA1, SATA2, etc.).


The ports appear to be grayed out in the BIOS unfortunately. There is only the ahci/ide option and it refuses to select anything below that.


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## envaanjaksa (Mar 24, 2017)

flavallee said:


> That model laptop does appear to come with *1* or *2* SATA hard drives with capacities of 320 GB or 500 GB or 640 GB or 750 GB.
> 
> View attachment 255948
> 
> ...


There are two hard drives with 320 GB each.


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## replay (Aug 13, 2003)

disconnect the harddrive u want to *keep *the data (pull power plug or sata)
then see if u can install windows on the remaining drive..... u will lose all data on this drive


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## kenbok51 (May 31, 2011)

replay said:


> disconnect the harddrive u want to *keep *the data (pull power plug or sata)
> then see if u can install windows on the remaining drive..... u will lose all data on this drive


Wouldn't it be better to disconnect one drive at a time and see if the thing will boot. That will tell them which drive is the boot drive (unless they're in a raid configuration). Then with both drives connected transfer anything you want to keep from the boot drive to the second drive before you disconnect the second drive to load windows on the boot drive. It might also be a good idea to do this off line and rescan the second drive for viruses in Safe Mode after connecting it back before booting into Windows or going online. You might be able to do that by copying a malware installer to the second drive so you can install it from there in Safe Mode since the new install will not have any programs on it yet.


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