pc can't find hard drive

[Uncle Seamus]

Hello everyone,

just now I tried to boot my pc when he "told" me he couldn't find the requested boot device. I checked my BIOS settings: the hard drive was selected as my primary boot device, as normal. When I had a look at the "devices" tab, I saw a list of the available SATA's. SATA 2 was my CD-ROM drive but SATA 1 wasn't recognized.

In short: my BIOS settings don't seem to be wrong but the computer just can't find the hard disk. I haven't made any hardware changes recently.

As always, any help would be appreciated.

Greetings

 

[Jonathan_King]

Does your computer recognize the hard drive in the popup boot menu? Usually F11 or F12 during POST.

 

[Uncle Seamus]

no, only cd-rom and floppy

 

[Jonathan_King]

Sounds almost like the drive is failing. Try testing the drive in another machine. Also double-check and make sure the power cable is in all the way, and swap out the SATA cable.

 

[Uncle Seamus]

alright, I'll have a look at the cables

just want to say that I never experienced any problems with the drive...is it possible that it fails so suddenly, without any warning?

btw, I don't think I'll be able to test the HD in another computer

 

[HMonk]

Also, if available, try switching both power and drive cables to different ports.

Monk

 

[Uncle Seamus]

So, I have put the HD in a different computer and I can hear it spinning around, but the pc can't boot either

small remark: I have win7 x64 and the test pc (this pc) is win xp 32-bit

 

[HMonk]

HAL of one computer may prevent boot in the other.

Monk

 

[Uncle Seamus]

my motherboard has a reset button...I'll give that a try.

 

[Uncle Seamus]

I switched the hard drives of the two pc's and now, my pc starts up just fine
--> the HD is indeed "kaput"

I'll contact the firm and ask for a new one

in the past, I have had some trouble with "system service exception" BSOD's,
maybe my HD has got something to do with that

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hard drive failure is one common cause of BSODs. I'm glad you figured out the problem, but I'm sorry the drive failed. Hope you didn't lose much data!

If the BSODs don't stop, upload the dmps in the Crashes section and we'll take a look. See this post: http://www.sevenforums.com/crash-lockup-debug-how/34900-1-novice-how-ask-help-bsod-problem.html

 

[Uncle Seamus]

Thanks for your help. There wasn't any real important stuff on my drive, like a list of all CIA operatives working undercover...but it's always a pain to lose documents.