Windows 7 - HDD errors in bios, also issues in repair

Hi everyone.

I'm having a problem with my HDD. Last night my computer was working perfectly fine, but this morning while my bios was starting I received: 'Reboot and select a proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device' on the screen.

I'll tell you I have one HDD which is partitioned into C: with all the system files and D: with stuff I just want to put in it. I noticed when I went into the bios, no Slave IDE was detected, I am not sure whether this has anything to do with the problem (I can't remember if there was one) because there are not two HDDs.

But anyway, I put in my windows 7 install disc, select repair, and in there it cannot detect anything for some reason. Then I just continue into command prompt, run diskpart and type in 'select disk 0' and it returns 'the disk you specified in not valid'. I'm a bit confused as to what has happened, since I didn't really do anything to it between the time it was working and the time it was not.

Help would be really appreciated.

Numaholic, if your hard drive isn't detected in BIOS, it's usually a bad physical connection like the power or data cable or a bad hard drive. Do you know what type of drive it is, IDE or SATA? IDE uses the 2" wide ribbon cable, SATA uses the narrow, about 3/8" cable.

You could try reseating the power and data cables on the hard drive (PC tuned off). Do you hear the hard drive spin up when you power on the computer?

It is a sata connection. I tried unplugging the cables and putting them back in, but it doesn't seem to do anything, I'll try again though. Also in the bios options to select boot device the hard drive is recognized as an option. Thanks for the reply.

Edit: For some reason, the bios option takes longer than usual saying 'Auto-Detecting Pri Master ..ATAPI CD-ROM'.

Edit 2: I found this: Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times and am following option 2 to see if that does anything.

I entered 'list disk' and it returns 'There are no fixed disks to show.' Anybody have any ideas?

What type of SATA cables do you have? Due to their small size, the connectors on non-latching types can get dislodged very easily from the sockets on either the motherboard or drive (or both). To alleviate this, I recommend the use of latching cables.

Can you hear the hard drive spin up when you turn on the computer? It sounds like you have a failing hard drive and if the drive isn't recognized in BIOS, the Windows startup repairs won't be any help.

Check your cables or swap them with the CD (if the CD drive is SATA). Do you have another SATA port on your motherboard you can connect the hard drive to?

Try Loading Default Values in BIOS. If that doesn't work you could try attaching the hard drive to another computer with a USB adapter kit and see if you can read anything off it, but I think the drive or the controller on the drive is bad.

My sata cables are non-latching.

I do not have another sata inside my computer unfortunately. I'll check the connections on the motherboard. I'll see if I can use another desktop, to see if it is working, then I think the next cause is cables.

I can hear the HDD spinning. I checked the connections and they seemed fine for the sata. I had another sata lying around, so I replaced it and still not working. Also, I noticed there were 4 sata connections, 2 red and 2 black and I remember in my bios options there are 4 satas listed, so I thought these must be corresponding. Each of the 4 satas can't detect anything. Hopefully it is not the HDD that is gone.

That's a good idea, though it sounds like a bad controller on your hard drive. When you connect your drive to a different SATA port, make sure that port is turned on in your BIOS. Some motherboards have that option to turn a port on or off. If you can't get the drive recognized in BIOS using any method, it's probably toast.