Hard drive not appearing in BIOS after PC upgrade

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  1. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #11

    Sounds like probably the interface board is bad, but the disk internals might still be good. I would say take it to a reputable repair shop, especially one that caters to business users and data recovery. (And the Geek Squad is not all that reputable, BTW.)
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  2. Posts : 3,264
    Windows 11 Pro 64 bit Version 21H2
       #12

    NavyLCDR said:
    Sounds like probably the interface board is bad, but the disk internals might still be good. I would say take it to a reputable repair shop, especially one that caters to business users and data recovery. (And the Geek Squad is not all that reputable, BTW.)
    Yes, but only one drive disappeared so think that is it.
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  3. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #13

    jds63 said:
    Yes, but only one drive disappeared so think that is it.
    Just for clarification, I meant the interface board on the hard drive itself, not the motherboard.
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  4. Posts : 3,264
    Windows 11 Pro 64 bit Version 21H2
       #14

    NavyLCDR said:
    Just for clarification, I meant the interface board on the hard drive itself, not the motherboard.
    o.k. was not sure. I have never had to bring something to a PC shop, consider myself lucky or experienced. Geek Squad decent,hmm o.k.
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  5. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #15

    jds63 said:
    o.k. was not sure. I have never had to bring something to a PC shop, consider myself lucky or experienced. Geek Squad decent,hmm o.k.
    Just for a further clarification, I mentioned Geek Squad is NOT all that reputable. They are a big box company and wouldn't do things like trying a replacement interface board or some alternative to retrieve your data off the hard drive. They would just test it and say, yep - it's a bad hard drive, want to buy another one from us?

    They did good for me when I returned a laptop I bought from Ebay and actually paid for extra warranty for, but it was for a common problem of a bad power connector which is an easy and common fix - but I would not trust them to go to the extra lengths to get your data off the hard drive.

    If you a bit technically inclined you can look at the circuit board on the hard drive and see if it is plug-in or if it has soldered connectors to the physical drive. Then you might be able to purchase the same make/model hard drive and swap the interface boards.

    Usually when the physical disk goes bad, bios will still see the hard drive - you just can't write or read from it - or it performs terribly. If the bios refuses to see the hard drive, that points to the interface board.
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  6. Posts : 3,264
    Windows 11 Pro 64 bit Version 21H2
       #16

    Missed that one word, as i never used them before. I had SSD do this intermittently disappear from BIOS and explorer,but was not the board in the end. As another drive has been on it ever since, that port specifically.
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  7. Posts : 3,506
    Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 21H1 (May 2021 build 19043.1083)
       #17

    If you find the same drive model (and preferably close date of production with original), with a suitable screwdriver you can swap the circuit board and see if it comes to life. Needless to say that once you do that warranty is void, but it's worth it if you have valuable data. In the summer my dad's hard disk died from a power surge. It wouldn't be detected in BIOS. Likely I had a second disk of the same model. So I swapped the circuit board and I saved it. Now I have a spare drive without a working board, but I could use it once my dad's is old enough and start developing problems.
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  8. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #18

    CountMike said:
    Well, excuse mua for living, must have missed one word. Maybe you should save your keyboard wear with such smart comments.
    Sorry. Wasn't intended to be snarky. I'm trying to train myself to read posts more carefully than I've managed in the past. I miss sentences much too often.
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  9. Posts : 3,264
    Windows 11 Pro 64 bit Version 21H2
       #19

    bobkn said:
    Sorry. Wasn't intended to be snarky. I'm trying to train myself to read posts more carefully than I've managed in the past. I miss sentences much too often.
    Happened to me a number of times, misread posts and commented.
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  10. Posts : 62
    Windows 10 Home Edition
    Thread Starter
       #20

    spapakons said:
    Relax! Windows Update messed with all drivers during upgrade. All you need is to reinstall the SATA controller driver (if applicable) to make Windows see your disks again. IF there is no standalone SATA driver, then you need to install the chipset drivers which contain that and other system devices.
    bobkn said:
    My first step would be to remove the malfunctioning SATA drive and stick it in an external drive dock. (Maybe that's because I own an external drive dock. They are not expensive.) If you can't detect the drive in that, you probably have a hardware failure.

    Best of luck. It would be nasty to use the word "backup" at this late date, I suppose.
    CountMike said:
    IF it's not appearing in BIOS it's either connected wrong or it's electronics are fried. Windows or any other OS will not know about it. There is a slight chance that change of bus on MB would help. Also if controller in BIOS is set to AHCI or RAID, older HDDs may not like it.
    Also try changing data cable, they are known to fail.
    Thanks for all the replies. A few updates on the situation:
    I plugged it into my younger brother's machine who also runs a Gigabyte motherboard to the same avail. It's like I didn't plug anything in.
    Other brother then suggests I plug it into his machine and for some crazy reason it shows up there no problem. He ran some diagnostics on it (I can't remember the names of them sorry!) and they all showed up clean..he's studying computing/computer science at college and he is baffled as to why it didn't work on my PC, reckons that maybe Gigabyte is a bit fussy?
    Anyway we managed to get maybe half the files off onto another disk to give back to me, then we tried to see if it would randomly work in my machine again (it didn't), but then also made a lot of uh, clunking noises, once we plugged into bro's PC again, and was even undetected a couple of times. It failed to copy files at once point too, so maybe it is dead???
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