Associate
- Joined
- 1 Sep 2016
- Posts
- 1
Hi all,
Last night I was using Internet Explorer when it suddenly hung. I assumed it had just hit a website it didn't like and switched to Firefox - that hung as well. I press Ctrl-Alt-Del and got nothing except the blank (but coloured) screen, without the usual text to select Task Manager. At that point I was left with no option to reset, and when I did, the computer could no longer find the hard drive. Doesn't appear in the BIOS at all.
The same thing happened last week, but the problem was solved by unplugging the drive's power cable and inserting a different connector on the same cable, so I assumed it was just a fried connector. But this time it's not the power - I plugged in a connector that I know is working fine (because it was in the DVD drive) and still the hard drive is nowhere to be seen. Also replaced the SATA cable with a new one, and tried the motherboard's other SATA connector - still nothing. So I think I've eliminated everything other than changing the hard drive itself. Which is obviously going to be annoying.
Is the hard drive just fried - or is there anything else I can try other than shell out for a new one? I appreciate that I probably already know the answer to this, but I just want to eliminate everything before losing everything that was on the drive. (There is stuff like save games that will be annoying to lose, but nothing valuable enough to pay for a specialist to salvage it.)
It's a Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s, just under 4 years old.
Last night I was using Internet Explorer when it suddenly hung. I assumed it had just hit a website it didn't like and switched to Firefox - that hung as well. I press Ctrl-Alt-Del and got nothing except the blank (but coloured) screen, without the usual text to select Task Manager. At that point I was left with no option to reset, and when I did, the computer could no longer find the hard drive. Doesn't appear in the BIOS at all.
The same thing happened last week, but the problem was solved by unplugging the drive's power cable and inserting a different connector on the same cable, so I assumed it was just a fried connector. But this time it's not the power - I plugged in a connector that I know is working fine (because it was in the DVD drive) and still the hard drive is nowhere to be seen. Also replaced the SATA cable with a new one, and tried the motherboard's other SATA connector - still nothing. So I think I've eliminated everything other than changing the hard drive itself. Which is obviously going to be annoying.
Is the hard drive just fried - or is there anything else I can try other than shell out for a new one? I appreciate that I probably already know the answer to this, but I just want to eliminate everything before losing everything that was on the drive. (There is stuff like save games that will be annoying to lose, but nothing valuable enough to pay for a specialist to salvage it.)
It's a Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s, just under 4 years old.
