Comments on: Hard drive not detected

By: rechil

rechil — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:47:17 +0000

The Q asker reply is needed here !

By: sixball

sixball — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:46:43 +0000

You said the HDD in question works fine in other machines – thts cool. What about other HDD’s in THAT machine?
I agree w/ Stevesz: if the HDD works in other machines and you can’t get a fresh HDD to work in your PC, break out that warranty..

By: stevesz

stevesz — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:01:26 +0000

If the drive is an IDE (ATA)drive, check to make sure that the jumper is set correctly. Dell ships with the jumper on the drive set to cable select. That is fine, but if the jumper is not in the cable select position, set the drive as Master.

If the drive is SATA, then there are no jumpers to worry about.

Make sure the drive is cable properly. The power cable should be plugged in firmly. The data cable should go to the lowest numbered connector on the main board. When starting the machine make sure the HDD is spinning up. You may be able to hear it, and you can feel if it is. If it is not, change the power lead, with the machine off, of course, and then check the drive again. If still no joy, change the power supply.

If the drive spins up, go into the BIOS settings.Check that the settings show the correct type of drive. If not change the setting. Check the selection of drives in the BIOS. Your drive should show in the first IDE or SATA port shown. Ensure that those listings are set to automatically identify the drive. Restart.

Still no joy? Steal a known good boot drive from another machine and put it into the machine having the problem. If that drive gives you no joy, you have a main board problem. It may be the BIOS or it may be something else. Call Dell, particularly if the machine is still under warranty. They will probably make you jump through these hoops, as well as some others, but their diagnosis will be the same, but, perhaps, a bit more specific.

By: rechil

rechil — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 06:51:13 +0000

Press F10 to set the RAID up and turn the SATA controllers on in BIOS. Yes Vista install the basic RAID driver while installing it then u should find chipset drivers and that will install Updated drivers. It may require reinstall the same.

By: jinteik

jinteik — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:26:03 +0000

check if you can see the hdd inside the bios..did anyone change the boot also?

how about your cd / dvdrom, can you check if it shown in the bios also?

and like rakei say, check all your cables if it is connected nicely.