HELP! Primary hard disk drive not found

If you've reseated the drive, it's likely dead. It could still be the optical drive - have you tried removing one or the other to see if the one present is recognized?

Check your Boot order in BIOS and see if both show there. If they do not, put them back in some

Message Edited by Anders78 on 10-28-2004 04:10 AM

www.newegg.com and www.zipzoomfly have good prices on OEM drives(no pretty box or manuals) I bought a 30gb Hitachi 5400rpm and a 40gb Hitachi 7200rpm from them; both are very good drives. That should take care of the Harddrive problem. On the Optical drive, do you know what type it is?  I am not referring to the Dell P/N, but am talking about who made the "Gut" and its type number. That is what would show in Device Manager,  but you would have to remove the top cover on the drive itself to find out since it is nonoperational. It is unusual for both to go bad at the same time, but anything is possible where computers are concerned. Curiosity; what type and size of harddrive went bad and how old?

By the way, maybe I should mention that I updated the bios from A07 to A13...but it didn´t work just after I updated.....

Message Edited by Anders78 on 10-28-2004 01:18 PM

The bios update sometimes will scramble Bios settings and you may need to access F2 BIOS Setup and Press Alt+F to reset to Default. Then reboot and reenter F2  BIOS Setup and recheck all settings, make changes as you see fit and then save and exit. You did not mention this in your original or later POSTs, or I would have recommended this sooner

The TEAC CDW-224E is the Gut. Dell buys these and others and installs them in their carriers with their P/Ns on the label.

Fujitsu is a drive brand I have used in smaller and older drives and they seemed OK. I don't know how good they are now in the later models.

The IBM drive you have is a premerger-with-Hitachi drive. If it fails later, it might still be in warranty at Hitachi. I would run Scandisk and Diagnostics checks on it though and make sure it truly is failing, and not just acting strangely because of the BIOS Flash. That model drive does not have a bad rep and was made just before IBM began making 9.5mm 5400rpm drives. They made some 12.5mm 5400rpm drives in 2001, but the first 9.5mm 5400rpm drives came out toward the end of 2002.

Glad your LT is working again.

 

Well, it went dead before I did the bios update. Then after the update...just randomly it worked for a short while but when I inserted it in the docking station (Dell C/Port II) with and extern vga monitor it went dead again and still is.  =/

Could it be something else, a ide handler, chip on the motherboard?   Coz I burned 2 cd´s with it just before I inserted it in the docking station.

/Anders

Intermittents are the bane of a protech's existence, and that is even when they are hands-on with the machine. It is beginning to sound like a M'Board problem. but that is only an "Educated Guess" on my part; also I am far from being a ProTech.

Hmmm that doesn´t sound funny at all =/

Btw, I have ignored the LT for two days and today I started it and it worked! Weird.....could it be the powersupply adapter??

Anders

Hi again guys,

I runned Drive Fitness Test (v3.77)  on the disk and it couldn´t find any errors. However, when I did a restart it didnt want to work again.....heat problems?

/Anders