Primary drive 0 not found

[yemburt]

I have what I fear is a pretty bad problem with the above error message. I was running spybot in safe mode and upon rebooting, I began hearing a clicking sound from the PC and I cannot get it to startup.

Upon booting, it immediately goes to a black screen that says "Primary drive 0 not found. Press F1 to continue, F2 for setup utility".

It's a Dell 4600c that is about 4 years old. Is this a salvageable problem, or more importantly, can I at least save all of my data? If it helps at all with transferring data, I also have a Sony Vaio Laptop that works perfectly fine.

Anyone have any ideas here or is all hope lost?

 

[vacunita]

I began hearing a clicking sound from the PC

You'll have to isolate where the sound is coming from: fan, hard drive, loose component etc..

My money is on the Hard Drive, judging by the error you are getting.
If it is no longer being detected by the computer there's not much you can do. either try the drive in another computer, or take it to a professional recovery service.

But the first thing to do, would be to check all connections to and form the hard drive make sure everything is tight. and nothing has moved or disconnected.




----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[BadBigBen]

Unfortunately, as Vacunita pointed out, it does sound like the drive took a dive...

if the data is very important, e.g. a DB of medical records or such, then going to a professional recovery company is the way to go...

if the data was only personal, then it probably is not worth the money invested in such a service, as these can be VERY costly...


Ben

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

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[wahnula]

See if the hard drive is visible to the BIOS. During POST, BIOS will identify the hard drive if it sees it. This is the make/break step. If the BIOS can see the hard drive then it's salvageable; if not (and you've double-checked all your connections) then you're learning about backing up data the hard way.

Professional recovery services can sometimes recover the data, but don't expect it to be cheap. And stop using the drive ASAP to prevent further damage. Google "hard drive recovery" for options in your area.

Going forward, you have learned that it is not a question of IF a hard drive will fail, but WHEN. Backing up to another disk or machine (your Vaio comes to mind) should be a routine step for every computer user.

Tony

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