Reboot and select proper boot device

Dual form · 15 Oct 2013

Hi guys, I have searched the forum and tried some of the solutions but it does not solve my problem. I had disconnected my had and reconnected it but to no avail. I can't even enter the bios setup screen, I can only enter the asrock setup utility screen. Does this mean my hdd is spoilt? Thanks for any help!

By the way in the Uefi setup utility, under the boot option priorities,it only shows my dvd drive my hdd is not shown there

TVeblen · 15 Oct 2013

Hello Dual form. Welcome to the forum.

Yes, that error message means that the system cannot find a boot capable device. This indicates that your hard drive is not recognized by the system as a boot device.
If you put a bootable CD in the DVD Drive then the system should recognize the DVD as a bootable device and you will not get that message.

The reasons that a HDD could not be recognized as a bootable device are:

No power to drive (check cables, test for 12v)
No data transfer (check SATA cable)
No operating system on the drive (blank drive, MBR damaged, System Partition corrupted)

But because the HDD is not recognized in BIOS/UEFI settings then it is most likely that the drive is either not connected properly or it has died electrically.

Can you test this drive in another computer?

Also: I assume that the "ASROCK setup utility" is the same as "UEFI setup utility", not 2 different setup enviroments. Correct?
If so, that is your BIOS setup. It has just been renamed for the new system.

Dual form · 15 Oct 2013

Hello,thanks for the reply! I tried plugging in my old hdd which is also spoilt unfortunately however it managed to go to the windows welcome screen and my bios is able to detect the device so I guess I have to buy a new hdd. I tried to boot my windows Xp install disc and it works but after a while it gave me a blue screen due to the fact my hdd is faulty?

Is there any chance that some of the data in my hdd can be salvaged? And yes the asrock utility is basically the same thing,thanks for the help man!

TVeblen · 15 Oct 2013

You can try a free data recovery program like RECUVA, but unless you can get the hard drive to be recognized at the BIOS/UEFI level I doubt very much you will be able to use it.

Sometimes the drives fail because the controller board inside the drive goes bad. In that case you could find an identical used hard drive (exact same model number) and switch out the controller board and then gain access to the data on the drive. This is not a project for a novice. And if the drive failed for any reason other than the controller board you will have gone through all the effort for nothing.

Otherwise it needs to go to a data recovery company - very costly solution - where they can remove the platters and grab the data off of them.