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October 24th, 2007 13:00

SATA primary hard disk drive failure

Can not get my 2 year old Dimension 5150 to boot.  A message says 'SATA hard disk drive failure. No boot drive available. Drive 1 not found: Serial ATA, SATA-2. Drive 3 not found.'  There is a slow clicking from the hard drive that I do not recall hearing before.  The hard drive is a Seagate Barraculda 7200.
 
Has anyone experience of this problem and/or any suggestions for how I can get by computer and data back?

October 24th, 2007 15:00

Robs56,


Welcome to the Dell Community Forums.

This is sounding like you may have a failed drive, but to be sure we would want to run the Dell quick test.

Before running the test though, if you have a second system, get an external USB SATA drive enclosure, put the suspect drive in the enclosure, and see if you can view and retrieve the files on the drive.

After that, put the drive back into the system, boot up and at the BIOS screen press Ctrl-Alt-D. This will start the hard drive test.

If you can't view the files on the other system, or the test fails, then you have a bad drive.

3 Posts

October 24th, 2007 17:00

Elsbeth,
 
Thanks for your message.
 
I have a second system, the one I am now contacting you on, but no SATA enclosure.  Do you recommend I buy an enclosure so I can try the drive on another system before doing the Dell hard drive test or is it ok to go straight to the hard drive test?
 
Robs56

October 24th, 2007 18:00

Robs56,


If the drive is marginal, then running the test might cause it to fail completely. You would need to purchase the enclosure, which is a drawback of using that method since your other system doesn't have SATA.

If you could borrow a friends PC that did have SATA to try the drive in, that would be the better choice.

10 Elder

 • 

46K Posts

October 24th, 2007 19:00


@Robs56 wrote:
I don't want to risk causing it to fail completely.
 
Seagate appear to provide a 5 year warranty for their hard drives.  Do you know whether this is available if purchased as part of a Dell?





No, when the hard drive is part of a system purchased from Dell, the warranty is provided by Dell, not the hard drive manufacturer.

Bev.




===================================================
Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

3 Posts

October 24th, 2007 19:00

I don't want to risk causing it to fail completely.
 
Seagate appear to provide a 5 year warranty for their hard drives.  Do you know whether this is available if purchased as part of a Dell?
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