BIOS Not Always Recognizing Hard Drive

Hi guys!
My girlfriend has a PC which I bought her a couple of years ago, it's a relatively basic (but more than adequate) system. It's used perhaps once or twice a month, usually for simple tasks such as photos, internet browsing etc.

A couple of weeks ago, with Windows 8.1 installed, she tried to turn the PC on (with no changes made from a perfectly working PC) to be asked to 'Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device.'

Now, Googling told me to go into BIOS and ensure that it was still booting from the C: drive, but it was no longer there. Long story short, I concluded that the drive had died and therefore upgraded the 500GB SATA that was in there to a new Kingston SSD drive and I also upgraded to Windows 10.

At first, the Kingston SSD drive worked flawlessly, however I then get another phone call, the error is back again. I head round to fix it, and you guessed it, the drive isn't showing in BIOS.

After a few reboots, trying every setting I could in BIOS it works again, and it shows up again aswell, all is fine.

Next day, same problem, but this time it wants to work even less. I try swapping the SATA ports, the SATA and power cable, just about everything I can think of and eventually it shows up. I told her to leave the computer on in the hope that the error doesn't come back, but sure enough in the middle of the night last night she woke up to the dreaded black screen once again.

I understand that this is an intermittent fault, but it really couldn't have come at a worse time financially for needing a repair. Not only does it look like we've lost all the data on the previous hard drive, (which stupidly wasn't backed up) but now the PC won't work at all. Gah!

Any help is HUGELY appreciated, thank you all so much in advance.

Really need more information, ie motherboard make and model, please fill in your system spec's.
Have you tried updating the BIOS to the latest one available. Or resetting BIOS to defaults. How old is the motherboard.
Possible cause -MB failing. How many drives are in the machine, if you have more than one is that recognised.

no1yak said:

Really need more information, ie motherboard make and model, please fill in your system spec's.
Have you tried updating the BIOS to the latest one available. Or resetting BIOS to defaults. How old is the motherboard.
Possible cause -MB failing. How many drives are in the machine, if you have more than one is that recognised.

Apologies for not filling this out, I have just tried to amend it, I can see how to edit the entire profile apart from the specs area.

For now, here are the details:
Motherboard - ASRock A55M-HVS
Tried resetting BIOS defaults
Motherboard is approx 3 years old with VERY little use (once in a blue moon)
One drive in the machine
Just tried replacing CMOS battery to no avail.

Since last night when my girlfriend awoke this morning to find it back at the insert boot media screen again, I haven't been able to get the computer to detect the SSD once. For this reason I am assuming for the moment that the SSD is fubared, and I am currently trying to install Windows 10 onto another drive to see if this fixes it.

alphanumeric said:

At this point I wouldn't be suspecting the drives, I'd be checking to see if its the motherboard that's failing? I'd plug those drives that you think failed, into an external enclosure or slave them into another PC to see if they are in fact fubared. If the drives are fine, odds are its an issue with the motherboard, SATA cables, or maybe power supply?

Thanks for your response.

I don't have particularly convenient access to try the drives in another PC at the moment, but I can do eventually if necessary. I also don't have an external enclosure so that's not an option for the minute.

I have now done a clean install on the SATA drive, and for the moment all seems well (but it did with the SSD aswell.)

What steps would you take next and how would I go about checking the motherboard and power supply?

The problem is that the drive is not being recognised by the BIOS, that is why before Windows takes over. Clean install is for Windows problems not hardware ( if I's not recognised by the BIOS Windows will not know it's there) I still say MB is faulty. Unfortunately PC usage is not a factor in this.
I've had two Asrock MB's and both went south within a year, so time and usage in most cases is not really relevant.

Thanks for the response, I assume there's no chance that the Kingston SSD is to blame since everything seems okay on the new SATA drive that I've put in so far?

Is there any way of knowing if it's a motherboard problem at all?

Thanks for your time and help, it's much appreciated.

Unfortunately unless you have an alternative MB, then there's not much else you can do. the unlikely fact is that you have swapped the drive from one that was giving you the problem to a new SSD and the problem still exists, common denominator = SATA port's = Motherboard.
As I have no first hand experience with your machine I can only guess.

no1yak said:

Unfortunately unless you have an alternative MB, then there's not much else you can do. the unlikely fact is that you have swapped the drive from one that was giving you the problem to a new SSD and the problem still exists, common denominator = SATA port's = Motherboard.
As I have no first hand experience with your machine I can only guess.

alphanumeric said:

Sorting out hardware issues is always a pain, especially if that's your only PC. It's not ideal, but you could take one of the drives you suspect as being bad, and salve them in the problem PC. Then see if it shows up and is accessible. I'm not sure what it might prove though? The first drive could have failed, but two drives in a row? And the second one being a new drive, unlikely? That's why I'm leaning towards it being a motherboard issue. Guess work on my part to be honest though.

Have a good close look at the motherboard. Look for any bulging capacitors, or ones with brown or black goop on them. If you see any that's a clear sign they have failed. And if you haven't already, replace the BIOS battery, the small coin cell. They can cause weird things to happen when they fail.

Thanks for the replies guys.

No spare MB's here unfortunately, I have tried the drive that went initially in my PC and I ran a test that someone else recommended, it's come back as a pre-failure on Reallocated Sector Count (in GSmartControl.)

Looking back now, I think I remember the SSD showing signs of issues early on, I don't think it's entirely possible that it wasn't quite the ticket to begin with. I have been running this other SATA which I had laying around for a few hours now, and it's been running absolutely perfect. No problem with SATA ports, no bootup issues, just slower than the SSD which is to be expected.

I have just had as good of a check-over on the MB as I can to see any obvious bulging or similar problems but it all looks like new, frustratingly.