Can't find hard drive

bobg19 · 07-14-2007, 04:40 PM

I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop running XP professional. It was working-then froze. I tried to reboot and get a message that there is no bootable device. Went to BIOS, which indicates no hard drive installed.

I removed and replaced the battery. I tried booting without the optical drive installed. I removed the harddrive, checked the contacts (they look ok), reinstalled the harddrive. All unsuccessful. I tried cleaning the NV memory - still no harddrive recognized. The harddrive is a Hitachi.

Any suggestions? If I need to reformat, is there a way to run this harddrive as a slave on a desktop PC, to try to recover the data before reformatting?

Thanks for your help.

Bob

**Done_Fishin** · 07-15-2007, 06:48 AM

I've seen several laptop hard drives from Hitachi (20GB & 40GB) that suddenly stop working .. most likely they will be dead .. I have 3 that I want to pull apart and exam to see if tere is anything common that might have failed ..

This is one of those prime examples that we see where back-ups are very important .. and need to be done frequently possibly using an external drive ..
If you're laptop allows you to boot from CD try downloading UBCD (Linux Version) and running the Hitachi disk diagnosis program .. make sure that it's not a BIOS problem first though .. ensure that BIOS is sat to auto detect your HDD ..

There are USB to IDE adapters with 2.5" and 3.5 " IDE connectors .. also a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter that will allow you to hook up to your Desktop .. will probably require a spare power connector to provide the 5V supply .. then use a data recovery program to fish for data .. if the drive can be recognised

07-14-2007, 04:40 PM	#1 (permalink)
bobg19 Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 25 OS: win xp	Can't find hard drive I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop running XP professional. It was working-then froze. I tried to reboot and get a message that there is no bootable device. Went to BIOS, which indicates no hard drive installed. I removed and replaced the battery. I tried booting without the optical drive installed. I removed the harddrive, checked the contacts (they look ok), reinstalled the harddrive. All unsuccessful. I tried cleaning the NV memory - still no harddrive recognized. The harddrive is a Hitachi. Any suggestions? If I need to reformat, is there a way to run this harddrive as a slave on a desktop PC, to try to recover the data before reformatting? Thanks for your help. Bob

07-15-2007, 06:48 AM	#2 (permalink)
Done_Fishin Moderator Hardware Team Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Brit living in Greece Posts: 7,282 OS: WinME, WinXP Pro SP3, Win7 Beta, Ubuntu 9.04 & Netbook Remix & CD2USB, Mepis 6.5, Fedora 10 My System	Re: Can't find hard drive I've seen several laptop hard drives from Hitachi (20GB & 40GB) that suddenly stop working .. most likely they will be dead .. I have 3 that I want to pull apart and exam to see if tere is anything common that might have failed .. This is one of those prime examples that we see where back-ups are very important .. and need to be done frequently possibly using an external drive .. If you're laptop allows you to boot from CD try downloading UBCD (Linux Version) and running the Hitachi disk diagnosis program .. make sure that it's not a BIOS problem first though .. ensure that BIOS is sat to auto detect your HDD .. There are USB to IDE adapters with 2.5" and 3.5 " IDE connectors .. also a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter that will allow you to hook up to your Desktop .. will probably require a spare power connector to provide the 5V supply .. then use a data recovery program to fish for data .. if the drive can be recognised __________________ . . I'm not old!! I'm age impaired .. D_F I DON'T PLAY GAMES How to mark your thread as solved HDD DIAG UTILS TSF's Photographer's Corner Last edited by Done_Fishin; 07-15-2007 at 06:51 AM.