BIOS/Vista won't recognize internal SATA drive

[danw77]

OK, went to reboot computer this morning and it would not boot. Swapped out hard drive for a new and did a fresh install of Vista. Trying to recover data from old drive (now hooked up as 2nd drive) but neither the bios or Vista will recognize that the drive is present. I have changed cords, ports, etc and nothing seems to help. Is this drive toast or is there something I can do to recover the data? I have quotes from data recovery companies of $1400, which is way too much. I just want my pictures back.

 

[BadBigBen]

danw77, I am afraid to tell you, but that drive has gone to the great hunting grounds...

when the BIOS does not detect it, then it is either not connected or dead, seeing that you already tried different cables and powerplugs...

you could, if you are up to it, try replacing the PCB of the drive with an exact replacement, from a working HDD (manufacturer and type of drive must be the same)... once you did that, and it gets recognized in the BIOS, then get as much data of off it as possible, and bin it...

other than that...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[PRPhx]

And this should be a good lesson. BACK UP YOUR IMPORTANT FILES IN A TIMELY MANNER. If you have files you don't want to lose, burn them to a dvd/cd-rom or copy them off to an external drive or some other type of secondary storage.

 

[danw77]

Thanks for your help. It turns out I didn't loose as much as i thought. The Vista backup worked well enough that I only lost a couple documents. I had been getting a buzzing from that drive ever since I installed it. I thought it was just something loose, but it turns out that drive was on its way to a mechanical failure. I'm going to send it back to Seagate and get a replacement through the warranty (it was only about 4 months old) so I don't want to take it apart.