How can I add a second hard drive to a previously configured UEFI/ACHI Windows 8 machine?

Recently purchased a new Windows 8 PC.

It came with one hard drive.

I want to a second hard drive to it. This second hard drive is my data hard drive from my previous computer.

However, I have run into issues when the system accesses it.

The drive is found in the BIOS. But is not seen by Explorer or Disk Management.

I have added the drive to the next available SATA slot: SATA 2.

The machine is a UEFI/ACHI based machine.

In my reading I have found people documenting the following:

1) adding multiple partitioned hard drives (like mine is) to UEFI based machines is not possible 2) I have seen it suggested that you can only add blank hard drives to UEFI based machines. However, in doing so, I did not have success. I tried to add it as a hard drive with unallocated space and then as a hard drive with a single simple partition. Both attempts failed.

My ultimate question:

What is the proper procedure for adding a second hard drive to a UEFI/ACHI machine?

I do not want to reinstall the OS and start from scratch as I have seen suggested elsewhere. There has to be a way to accomplish this without all that hassle.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Solution 1:

Windows 8, when installed using the UEFI configuration, will not boot with another drive connected to the system that has an Extended/Logical partition.

This even includes external drives

Credit goes to http://windows8forums.com/windows-8-rtm-support/13384-windows-8-wont-allow-me-add-second-hard-drive-new-post.html