Hard Drvie missing

[larry53]

My wife decided to clean my computer, (bad idea). When I turned it on I got a black screen that said insert setup disks. I cut the computer off, open the computer up and found a wire had been knocked off. I placed the wire back on and checked all the other connections. Turned it back on, same problem. So I order the setup disks. Placed one in and get, hard drive not found. I went to the setup meniu at the main and there is a rohm drive listed but know hard drive. Is there any way of checking to make surre the hard drive is now bad or a way of the computer finding the hard drive. I have a H.P. computer with windows xp media center.

[ckirchen]

Originally Posted by larry53 My wife decided to clean my computer, (bad idea). When I turned it on I got a black screen that said insert setup disks. I cut the computer off, open the computer up and found a wire had been knocked off. I placed the wire back on and checked all the other connections. Turned it back on, same problem. So I order the setup disks. Placed one in and get, hard drive not found. I went to the setup meniu at the main and there is a rohm drive listed but know hard drive. Is there any way of checking to make surre the hard drive is now bad or a way of the computer finding the hard drive. I have a H.P. computer with windows xp media center.

Not sure what's wrong, could be just about anything, but whatever you do, do not install a fresh copy of Windows onto the drive. Windows Setup will erase all of the files currently on the drive (or partition) during the installation. If you need to retrieve data, connect the drive to another computer as a slave.

You could also bring it into a computer shop.

[ImanCarrot]

TUrn it off and unplug the main power then power it back on. Get into the BIOS and check that the Hard Drive is listed there. Thats a start.

[larry53]

Hard drive is not listed.

[Al_The_Man]

Check seating of the H.D. ribbon cable, both ends, and the power connector on the back of the drive.
If the Bios still does not recognize the drive unplug it and take it to your local repair shop to do a quick check on it, probably do it while you wait.
Al.

[larry53]

I had the hard drive checked. It is bad, the guy told me that I could put it in a freezer and sometimes that will revive it. Not sure about that fix, I am going to get a new one.

[Al_The_Man]

I generally try the freezer trick to enable enough time to clone it, as a last resort.
Al.

[larry53]

I guess you learn something everyday. When I change the hard drive, what am in for. I will remove the old hard drive and placed a new on in. What is next? Will the computer guide me on formating and other things that may be required for a new hard drive? I will have only one hard drive in the computer. I have never done anything like this before, so all help is needed.

[ImanCarrot]

Al's right, the freezer trick works. Personaly if you haven't done this before I'd pay someone to do it (serious), but if you want to know how I usualy do it here goes:

This is going to take you a few hours, so be prepared.

Get your Windows instalation disk.
Stick the new hard drive in.
Boot the PC, get into the BIOS (usualy F6, or F8 or F2 or DEL depending on your PC).
Make sure your first boot device is CD.
Continue booting, format the hard drive and install Windows (should take about 1/2 hour or so depending on the HD size).

Now comes the fun part... drivers.

Get into Device Manager under Settings/ Hardware if I recall correctly and check if anything's got a yellow exclamation mark (like !) next to it, if it does and Windows hasn't detected the hardware you will need to download the drivers for it. Driverguide.com is good for this.

Useful tip: sometimes your soundcard or whatever will show up as undetected BUT it's not really that if it's on the motherboard (ie, not an actual physical card) so you need the motherboard driver.

Once you're up and running, look at your old HD, you'll see jumper pins on the back next to the power lead input, there will be a diagram or letters telling you how to enable it as a Slave (it should now be enabled as a Master unless your PC guys have changed it) enable it as a Slave or CS (Cable Select), stick it in the freezer for an hour or two, stick it in the PC- there should be a 25 D pin connector next to where your Master Drive is plugged in (the Master's usualy blue, the Slave's the other one) connect the power and re-boot.

You'll see your Master as C:\ and the Slave will be something like E:\ or F:\ depending on how many CD/ DVD drives you got. If you can access the Slave then you got a result.... power down, remove the Slave drive, stick it back in the freezer, download a clone program (like HDclone), burn it to CD, stick the Slave back in the PC, boot from CD and clone the Slave to the Master.

This will all probably take about 4 hours... I'd pay someone to do it personaly- the reason being that if cleaning your PC has knocked out your HD God alone knows what else has been killed (memory, CPU etc) your MOBO may be fried in the worst case.

[TDA]

The freezer trick is for dieing hard drives (ones that are not working but are still seen in the bios). It will not work on a drive that can't be seen from the bios.

It sounds like your wife used a vacuum on your machine and static killed the PCB. If you can find the same drive (model, size, revision, ect) you can swap the PCB and revive the drive. For how long I can't say, but usually long enough to get your data off.

[Al_The_Man]

What I have found is the fastest, is to pick up a copy of Acronis True Image for about ~$30.00.
Set the boot up order for CD, put the new HD in as master and the old 'frozen' one as slave.
Boot up and Acronis will load its own operating system and give you a menu to copy drive 'D' to 'C' or whatever and it will take care of the rest by the walk through menu.
Should take more no than an hour.
Even if the frozen drive does not work, you have clone software now that you can copy this future one or any other system for back-up purposes.
Al.

[TDA]

If you get a Seagate or Western Digital drive they both come have free versions of Acronis. It is the fastest way I have ever seen to image a drive as well.