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Hard Drives not detected

dgreen007
Grafter
Posts: 169
Registered: ‎05-03-2008

Hard Drives not detected

I knew this would happen and I didn't back up first....
My PC has died on me or so it seems and without having to fork out a ridiculous amount for an IT guy I wanted to try and fix the problem myself.
I've gone into the system bias and the two drives in the PC are not being detected.
I tried using the Mesh recovery disk (yes, I did say Mesh and I regret ever buying this) but obviously this did not work.
The machine has XP running on it and was bought about five years ago.
Any ideas would be really apreciated.
21 REPLIES 21
HPsauce
Pro
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Registered: ‎02-02-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Mesh often have raid. You said 2 drives, are they (were they) configured via a raid controller?
If so they probably won't appear in the BIOS anyway; you have to wait until the raid setup prompt appears.
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
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Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: Hard Drives not detected

If you can boot from CD, use a Linux "Live" disk to see if anything is visible in the hard disk department.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

MuppetGrinder
Grafter
Posts: 151
Registered: ‎10-10-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Fire us the model number would you.  Also, could you describe the cause of death and whither or not any components have been added or modified from the OEM Build
samuria
Grafter
Posts: 1,581
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Registered: ‎13-04-2007

Re: Hard Drives not detected

If the bios cant find them we assume they were there before then it could  be
Power lead to the drives  see if they are in correctly try another one if there are any spare or swap with cd or any other  if not
drive dead can you hear it is there any leds on the drive can you try it on another pc or on the cd cable
ribbon cable pulled off or damaged try another one push it in tight again try on the cd cable
disk  controller knackered  does the bios see the drive if you put it on the other controller ie cd rom cable?
Faulty power supply
7up
Community Veteran
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Sound advice from samuria. I've had this happen before myself. Had a hard drive that wasn't being replaced. Coughed up £40 for a brand new one and had the same problem! Turned out to be the power connector to the back of the hard drive was at fault. All the pins inside were loose and randomly making contact.
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dgreen007
Grafter
Posts: 169
Registered: ‎05-03-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Thanks for all your advice.
To Answer your questions:
Axisofevil - I have tried to boot from the mesh disk but as it says there are no drives detected it doesn't go any further. Would the Linux disk bypass this problem and how to I obtain one.
MuppetGrinder - The model No. is 5034633-001  S (mesh X-treme 3000G). It basically strated to blue screen, I tried to do a recovery but whatever date I chose it wouldn't work.
Nothing has been added to oem build.
Samuria - Funnily enough I haven't tried all the different babling options you mentioned but one of the hard drives connector cables seems broken and the other one wasn't even connected I did reconnect them but no joy. I swapped them but still no joy.
What would be the next step.
VileReynard
Hero
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Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Quote from: dgreen007
...
Axisofevil - I have tried to boot from the mesh disk but as it says there are no drives detected it doesn't go any further. Would the Linux disk bypass this problem and how to I obtain one.
...

My suggestion would be a Ubuntu disk Smiley - but others are available.
The idea of a live disk is that you only get a subset of Ubuntu - enough for word processing and web access and a few other things,
but all programs run in memory or from CD - so no disks are needed - although software runs quite a lot slower.
AFAIK the absolute minimum memory requirement is 256MByte.
You need to download and burn a CD - see http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download - that's about 650MBytes to download.
Choose the 32 bit option.
If you change the boot device to CD, then no errors should be shown about disks.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

dgreen007
Grafter
Posts: 169
Registered: ‎05-03-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

I'll try the Ubuntu disk but will this enable me to see my files as I have quite a few I'd like to salvage.
MuppetGrinder
Grafter
Posts: 151
Registered: ‎10-10-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

should be no problem seeing files, you just won't be able to run any programs.  But I think the order of the day is to see the hardrive, then worry about the files.  There are many ways and meens of recovering files, even after a format on a drive, so let's not get too concerned about that one.  I'll do a bit of digging and see what comes up anyway.
dgreen007
Grafter
Posts: 169
Registered: ‎05-03-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Hi,
Just an update on what's happening and I fiddled with the cables, and used the good old F5 key to go into safe mode and it worked.
I then tried booting as normal and so far it is working, it must have been a cable thing.
Thanks everyone for your help. Roll_eyes
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
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Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Time to take some backups.  Grin

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

7up
Community Veteran
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Also another thing to beware of with disk detection failures is capacitors on the motherboard bulging. This normally means replace them all or replace the board. The second possible issue is the CMOS battery. Thats an easy fix though...
Cables are frequently a culprit though... I've had issues with them TONS of times.
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dgreen007
Grafter
Posts: 169
Registered: ‎05-03-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

Quote from: okrzynska
Also another thing to beware of with disk detection failures is capacitors on the motherboard bulging. This normally means replace them all or replace the board. The second possible issue is the CMOS battery. Thats an easy fix though...

What do the capacitors look like and are they expensive to replace.
Do you know of any links that show what a capacitor looks like.
Should I change the CMOS battery first or aswell as the Capacitors. I suppose it depends on cost.
Is there a way of deducing which is really the fault here?
Angry
Thanks
MuppetGrinder
Grafter
Posts: 151
Registered: ‎10-10-2008

Re: Hard Drives not detected

The capacitors are the little cylinders on the mother board, cheep to buy, but you would need to solder them on if you were to try and replace them.  The battery is also cheep to replace, looks like a 10p coin and just pops in and out.  the only way to establish if either of them are at falt would be to logic test the Mo'bo, which would meen you learning exactly what path the current is supposed to follow on your perticular model of board.