cannot find hard drive

[luvcampin]

last night my pc was fine. went on it this morning and all it tells me know that there is no hard drive. Bios doesnt even list one there. I replaced the power and data cables and still have the problem. any idea of what can be done

[ronallandottk]

The usual cause for the symptoms you describe is simply a loose data or power cable, but you may have already ruled that out.

Let's start with other simple possible solutions:

First, try a reboot. It's weird, but sometimes a reboot can solve mysterious PC ailments.

If that doesn't work, try entering your PC's BIOS and try to manually detect the hard drive. Confirm that the IDE/SATA port in question is enabled. Try restoring BIOS defaults, if all else fails, consider clearing the BIOS (consult your motherboard manual for the proper pins to short).

Check the drive's power and data cables, if you have more than one drive, try swapping them around, try using another power cable from the power supply, try replacing the data cable, if you have a spare drive, try connecting it instead, just to see if the BIOS detects the drive. If you're using RAID, try turning it off.

If you're drive is an IDE one, and if there are other devices (such as an optical drive) on the same channel, remove the other device and see if that changes anything. Try connecting it to another IDE port. Inspect the jumper configurations at the rear of the drive, try removing the jumpers and returning them. Check if the drive is set properly as a master drive, a slave drive, or auto/CS.

If you use a SATA drive, try another SATA port. Some SATA drives have jumpers that have to be set depending on the SATA speed, try checking them as well.

If your drive still can't be detected, it's possible that the drive itself has died. You can confirm this by connecting another drive to your PC, and it gets detected right off the bat. You can also test this by connecting the drive in question to another PC and see if it gets detected. If it still isn't detected on another PC, the drive may very well be already dead.

Drives for the most part, if they are in good working order, are rarely problematic in the way you describe, unless there's a hardware defect of some kind, either in the drive itself, the motherboard's IDE or SATA ports, or the signal and power cables.

Let us know what happens, good luck.

[gosgirl]

Thanks.


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