PC wont detect primary hard drive

[DEElekgolo]

ok I need some help

Recently, my primary 500 GB hard drive is no longer detected during bootup so I cannot load any other OS. My other hard drives are just some crappy 20gbs from old computers. During bootup, my bios would take 2-5 minutes to detect all connected hard drives and dvd drives. Only to find out that my main drive is not detected. But the other ones are.

My primary hard drive is a SATA interface seagate hard drive with a 4pin jumper setup. With the metal cover facing up, the two jumpers on the right are bridged. Then I have 2 other dvd drives connected through SATA as well. I have 2 other IDE hard drives connected. One 20 gb. The other one is 9 gb. ( I use these for storing random shit)

I have tried so far:
*Taking Disconnected all the other drives so only the seagate is connected. It just doesn't detect anything
*Changing sata ports. I have tried all 4.
*During each re-configuration, I have checked my bio's settings to see if it detects anything through my sata ports, only to find everything but my primary drive.

This has just started happening and nothing was changed or tampered before this started happening. I got this hard drive back in 2008 and I run defrags and error checks once or twice a month.

[dydo]

I'm pretty sure that means your hard drive has failed.
If you can somehow get it to detect at least once, then you can try to run hiren's boot disk to check the hard drive for any errors and if possible, fix them. Otherwise, thats the end of your hard drives life.

[hobojoe]

During bootup, my bios would take 2-5 minutes to detect all connected hard drives and dvd drives. Only to find out that my main drive is not detected. But the other ones are.Maybe a bios problem? try updating/restoring your bios. Did you in anyway mess with your bios?

[Phopojijo]

Yeah I've seen these errors many times... ... do you have a backup?

[Jelly]

3 things you could try, but they require you to spend a bit of money or to have a friend with the parts.

- Your hard drive might have failed: you could plug it into a sata-to-usb adapter and see if anything will detect it
- Your sata cable might have broken, try another one.
- Your motherboard has somehow turned off its sata ports or they've failed. Try a CMOS reset or another mobo.

[Cojafoji]

if the platters are intact (and it sounds like they are), find a used version of that hard drive and replace the controller board if it's not any of the things mentioned above.

[DEElekgolo]

I don't feel much vibration when I plug it in. So I can assume it is not spinning, unless I shouldn't expect it to vibrate much. I have tried plugging the hard drive through other sata ports and power cables such as my CD drive. I even tried unplugging everything so that ONLY my primary hard drive is connected, same thing.
I am willing to get a new hard drive and to begin a habit of backing up frequently. But I want to restore at least my personal data from this hard drive. How would I go about doing something like that.

I may try the SATA-USB trick if it doesnt cost too much.

[Cojafoji]

buy the same harddrive used off of ebay. switch out the hard drive controller board.

[DEElekgolo]

so uh
Jelly got me to CMOS reset my mobo which screwed it up even worse. I turn it on and nothing shows up on screen,fans and drives are spinning, and bios does not beep like it regularly does.

[dydo]

Whats your mortherboard?

[DEElekgolo]

Back again.
So, I got a new mobo. Same problem, no POST or display. Then I was told it was the CPU. I got a lower-spec cpu and slapped it in. It turns on and everything is great. But now I am back to square 1. The hard drive is still not being detected.

[Futzy]

OUR COMPUTERS ARE KILLING THERESELVES BRO

[Jelly]

Back again.
So, I got a new mobo. Same problem, no POST or display. Then I was told it was the CPU. I got a lower-spec cpu and slapped it in. It turns on and everything is great. But now I am back to square 1. The hard drive is still not being detected.
I understand from reading modacity IRC that the drive was detected when plugged into another computer, so the drive itself is probably fine.

Are you still using the original mobo or the new mobo? If its the old one then it might still have an issue with its sata ports.
Did you try using another sata cable yet?

[DEElekgolo]

I understand from reading modacity IRC that the drive was detected when plugged into another computer, so the drive itself is probably fine.

Are you still using the original mobo or the new mobo? If its the old one then it might still have an issue with its sata ports.
Did you try using another sata cable yet?
Turns out that IT guy BSed the living shit out of me. But the problem is actually a wide-spread problem.

The stick SD15 firmware for barracuda 7200.11 drives(and a few others) have been known to lock them selves after extensive use. Seagate does a free firmware fix for affected drives.

But derp, it costs 15$ for a technical support phone call. I am able to get a 30 day free complimentary tech support phone call, but when I put in my serial numbers, it says that it is not valid. Great.

So I submitted a case with all my info and situation and I now await a response.