Primary Hard Disk Drive Not Found - help!

Question

I have a Dell Inspiron 9100...and have been very pleased with it.  However, this morning when I returned to my computer, there was a blank blue screen that I could not get out of.  So I restarted the computer...only to have it not be able to load into windows.    My hard drive is making an annoying 'tick-tick-tick'  sound that from what I've read today seems to be a VERY bad thing...   I also get an error message saying 'Promary Hard Disk Drive 0 not found'   & gives me the opportunity to press F2 or F12 for setup/boot menus.    I ran diagnostics in F12...again, my hard drive was not found.     Can I boot up windows w/ an XP boot CD of some sort?    Will I ever be able to recover the files on my hard drive???   Any other ideas???    Thanks in advance!!

ejn63 · Answer

Sometimes, if the drive is having trouble spinning up, the cold can assist it in doing so - particularly if the heads are stuck to the platters, or the spindle motor has a bad bearing in it that prevents it from spinning up.

ejn63 · Answer

At this point, you should purchase an adapter cable, remove the drive from the 9100 and mount it into a desktop running XP.  See if you can get the drive recognized - if you can, you may be able to read the data.  You might also try chilling the drive in a freezer (inside a ziploc bag) for about 30 minutes before trying it.   If you still can't get the drive recognized, you'll have two options - forget about seeing the data, or contact a data recovery service and pay for data recovery - the latter is a $1,000+ option, potentially much more than that.   It sounds like the drive has indeed expired.

TMadness1013 · Answer

Thanks for the ideas.   Why put the drive in a freezer though??   Thanks again

leigh_ann · Answer

You can try these steps to detect the hard drive.

1. Restart your computer.
2. When the Dell logo appears, press the key

3. When the System Setup screen appears, press + keys at the same time.
4. A beep will sound to indicate the defaults have been loaded
5. Check and, if necessary, reset the time, date, and year
6. Press the key.
7. Press the key to save changes and exit.
Your computer restarts.

If the hard drive is still not detected, you will need to reseat it (remove and plug it back)... you can visit this website for information on how to reseat the hard drive.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins9100/sm/hdd.htm#1123687

hope this helps:smileyhappy:

debra20 · Answer

you said that it sounds like your hard drive has expired!  however i just got my inspiron1150 in august and am having the same results as the person who cannot boot all of a sudden and getting the clicking sound - i ran the test, reseated the hard drive and still cannot boot.  does that mean that dell is selling reburbished or old used items cause right now i am extremely upset and bewildered.

hdeneise · Answer

I'm glad I'm not the only person!!! My 4150 started doing the same thing this morning....what's going on??

karoaper · Answer

I have the same exact problem with my 1 year old Latitude C840.  I can get the system to work by restarting (either Alt Ctrl Del or on/off) many many times.  Right now I basically don't turn the system off, which stinks as it makes my portable laptop importable.  I still don't know what's causing the problem and not sure if anyone else knows either.  There is another thread with many replies on the this same problem ( http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_harddrive&message.id=32521&view=by_date_ascending&page=1).  But it doesn't seem like anyone really knows the answer on thid thread either.

hdeneise · Answer

Turned out to be a bad hard drive.  Grrrrrr:manmad:  A less-than-two-year-old, rarely-used computer SHOULD NOT have to have its hard drive replaced.

Storage, Drives & Media

Primary Hard Disk Drive Not Found - help!

Was this post helpful?