[Danstar10]

Hi,

My computer has recently failed to boot up and I am pretty sure it is to do with the HDD not being recognized or the SATA ports buggering up.

Quick history been fine for years, few days ago saw some strange artifacting in Tomb Raider game, thought it was the GFX card so reset game and all ok. it did that twice.

yesterday it randomly froze 2 times for 2 or so mins, then recovered. 2nd time a super quick BSOD showed up and restarted. boots up ok again.

Now no booting. Takes a long time to show the 'detecting ide drives' on initial screen, then findes SOME of my HDDS.

I have 4 - 1 is IDE (storage) and always gets found, 2x 200GB (storage) which sometimes get found depending on configuration of SATA cables. 1x 500GB which is my OS / programs HDD which at the min is never getting found.

Tried swappping all combination of SATA ports / cables / power supply plugs and cant get main HDD to register. took it out and put my ear to it and it sounds fine, runs smoothly so susspecting it is not the HDD.

Checked SATA is activated in BIOS - sometimes the 2 x 200GB drives get recognized in BIOS as WDxxxxxx and sometimes noneWDxxxxx which is strange.

Anybody have any ideas?? MOBO buggered?
My motherboard is a 'GIGABYTE Nvidia Nforce 4 SLI the model is GA-K8N Pro-SLI'
processor is AMD X2 4400+
main HDD is Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS
OS is XP home 32bit

cheers

Edited by Danstar10, 09 August 2010 - 03:37 PM.

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Sounds like the "main HDD, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS" may be starting to fail. (It's mechanical and therefore WILL wear out). I'd run a "SeaTools for DOS" diagnostic to see:
http://www.seagate.c...nloads/seatools

[SpywareDr]

Sounds like the "main HDD, Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS" may be starting to fail. (It's mechanical and therefore WILL wear out). I'd run a "SeaTools for DOS" diagnostic to see:
http://www.seagate.c...nloads/seatools

[Danstar10]

Tried the HDD utility, it shows up all the HDDs apart from the Seagate...

Reason I do not think that it is dead is because if you put your ear to the drive you can still hear it running smoothly.
It is only a year or so old too, the newest component on the computer.

Any more ideas of if I can figure out if the problem is the HDD or the MOBO? I only have another laptop, not another PC to test it on. Dont think I could test it on a laptop could I?

[phillpower2]

The PCB may have gone, can you loan a usb hdd enclosure to put it into and test?
Here is a link to find out if the hdd is still covered by warranty https://store.seagat...y=SgSSORedirect
And here is a link to a hdd enclosure http://www.amazon.co...p/dp/B000V8KQE6

[SpywareDr]

You could also use a simple 2.5" SATA-to-USB 2.0 adapter ($19.99 USD with free shipping)

http://www.newegg.co...1-004-_-Product

More adapter options: http://www.newegg.co...ICE&PageSize=20

--

BTW, the Seagate ST3500320AS comes with a 3 year Manufacturer's Warranty

[Danstar10]

Ok I will give an enclosure a try - so will my system boot from an external HDD connected by USB? What would it be called in the options under boot priority in the BIOS?

[cert]

Hi,

My computer has the same problem. It happened 2 weeks ago. All 4 SATA ports stopped detecting my HDDS in BIOS (F9). Only IDE ports work fine.

All 4 SATA drives work when connected throuth a SATA-to-USB adapter to a laptop or my PC. Device manager in WinXP and Ubundu reports no problem with Sata controler.

I've changed power supply, memory, SATA cables, cleared CMOS. I've tried to boot my Main drive (dual boot Win7 and WinXP) using the SATA-to-USB adapter, but it doesn't work. PC restarts while the Windows is loading. I've read in couple forums that it's not possible to boot windows from USB HDD.

Next week i'm gonna try a PCI SATA controller. I'll let you know.

My PC:
GA-K8N Pro-SLI (F9)
AMD X2 3800+
3GB Consair XMS
HDDs: Raptor 74GB
3x SATA HDD
1x PATA HDD
GeForce 7800GTX
PSU Antec 500W