Recently (today), my internal, 1TB HDD has appeared to die.

Last thing I can remember doing on the computer was hibernating it. When I came to turn my computer on again several hours later, it took an abnormally long time to get pass the initial startup screen (that has brand info, what buttons to press for BiOS and startup options), then it attempted to boot from the CD Drive, which I puzzled me. After failing, I restarted it. This time, I tried to access the boot options menu. My HDD was missing from the list. I tried booting from he only option (CD drive) and (obviously) it did not work again.

I restarted again and accessed the BiOS. I found no signs of my HDD.

What could possibly have happend to my HDD?

My present theories are:
-it died, perhaps completely corrupted
-a cord has been unplugged and simply needs to be replugged
-????

Perhaps there is something else wrong with my computer?

If my HDD has died, is t possible to recover its data? Perhaps take it to a service store or something?

EDIT

FUCK I HOPE I DON'T LOSE EVERYTHING THAY I'VE AMASSED.

noting this for later reference
[09:18 pm]
HCM™Aristocrat -- check if the SATA cables are plugged in first and see if it goes through spinup
[09:26 pm]
jjf28 -- you switch your current drive to a slave cable/slave jumper position, and use another harddrive (as the master drive) to see if you can access it

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 21 2011, 2:31 am by Sand Wraith.

Is your harddrive SATA or IDE? (you can tell by the cable plug ins shown in the below image)

http://www.laptopparts101.com/hard-drive/

edit: my bad, mixed up some harddrive names, below instructions relevant for PATA drives

If you have a second hard drive laying around, you can connect that one as your master drive.

http://www.pchell.com/images/masterslave.jpg

The image above shows the jumper (the little white piece) you have to put in the correct location (important!! the correct location for the jumper cables should be drawn on your harddrive, if not, try to identify the brand of your harddrive and google it) to set the drive to slave/master. And then plug that one in where your old harddrive was; If that harddrive shows up in your bios, we can conclude it was your harddrive (or something about its orientation) at fault, and proceed to trying to recover the information off your 1TB harddrive (99% chance your information is still there, you just can't neccesarily access it easily).

Setting your old harddrive as a slave:

Simply put the jumper in slave position as explained above and connect it somewhere along the cable in your computer thats used to connect your harddrive (have the other harddrive your using as a master plugged in as well).

Boot up and log on to the harddrive your using as a master (you may have to install an operating system if one is not currently installed).

Look in My Computer, your 1TB harddrive may show up (i'd guess it would be named drive D:)

if it does show up, all your information should be there, or possibly hidden due to some sort of virus or severe software issue: in which case you can use a program ment to recover files removed from accessible memory (which is what happens when you empty your recycling bin, the files are still there, they're just considered "empty" space that can now be written over)

I don't recall a program name that does that, try googling undelete files/something along that line.

GL

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Nov 21 2011, 3:06 am by jjf28.

[Deleted]

jjf fixed his post so this is no longer relevant.

Although I'll point out that I'm 99.99% certain that you can't buy an IDE 1TB drive. Largest I've seen in 750gb.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Nov 21 2011, 2:58 am by Lanthanide.

My HDD is SATA.

I tried replugging the wires in to check if it was just an issue of a jarred wire, but it didn't work.

I'm going to have to go to a computer repair shop I think.

What's a repair shop going to do? Magically make your data reappear? I really don't think they'd be able to do anything if your HDD crashed. You should put your HDD into another computer and see if that computer's bios detects it. If it does, then your mobo is the problem. =O

yes