[sabretooth91]

Yesterday, my power went out during a storm (while PC was powered on). I turned my PC back on when the power was restored and went about my evening as usual. Then it froze up on me. I restarted and upon powering up, my PC does not recognize my SATA3 Hard Drive. It asks me if I want to boot from my CD-DVD ROM drive or Floppy drive(I thought it would be funny to have a floppy drive). It does not ask about my hard drive. I can put my Windows 7 CD in the CD Drive and get to the options to reformat. I haven't gotten as far as to see if it can find my hard drive during this procedure, since I had to leave for work. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas of what I should look for before buying a bunch of stuff I don't need or wasting a bunch of time.

I was thinking of probing the plug from the Power Supply to make sure it is still providing power to the Hard Drive, or maybe if it fried the HD. Is there another way to verify if the HD is powered on? I can't seem to get into my BIOS during power-up of the PC. There's no option there: but there should be, right?

Here's what I'm working with:
SanDisk Extreme SDSSDX-120G-G25 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 AMD 790GX HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 810 Deneb 2.6GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor HDX810WFGIBOX
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
ASUS ENGTS450 DirectCU TOP/DI/1GD5 GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W ATX12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Power Supply

Thanks. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll need a new Power Supply. But, I'd like to know how to figure out if I need to replace the HD and/or the PS. I don't want to buy things I don't need. And if I need multiple things, I'd rather order them at once.

[Alzeimer]

On an Asus it is usually the DELETE button that gets you into the BIOS.

If that works and you can enter the BIOS then try these steps:


Once in the BIOS check if the hard drive is detected.

In the BIOS under OnChip SATA Type check if it is on IDE, AHCI or RAID and make sure that the same choice is selected under which your Windows 7 was installed.

If none of the above helps, try disconnecting any not needed hardware leaving only your HD, Video Card, one stick of memory to see if your PSU will give enough power to start your HD.

Reset your CMOS to factory default

Use another power connector on your HD, change the SATA cable to another Sata port or change the SATA cable with a new one.

If none of these make your HD being detected connect it to another system to see if it is recognize there.

If your HD is recognize in another system but not on yours, it may be your PSU that is in fault.


Hope that helps

[sabretooth91]

Thanks for the reply.

The fault was in the Power Supply. The line that went to the HD got fried. The CD drive still worked because it was on another line, which fortunately had another plug. I plugged that into the HD and PRESTO! Good as new(ish)!

[Alzeimer]

Good to hear,

If I was you I would consider in the near future to replace your PSU since a malfunctioning one (specially if some parts fried as you say) can cause damage to other hardware.

[sabretooth91]

Very good point. I will do that. I will also buy an external HD to back up on.