SATA hard drives suddenly not working

Hi
I rebooted my generic desktop PC (3 hard drives) after a windows 7 upgrade last night and the PC will not boot up and it asks me to insert a system disc before it gets to windows. The PC beeps once on start up. I have tried the ultrimate boot cd and it can only find one hard drive. I have managed to get into the bios and it seems like the two SATA drives are not being detected, but the IDE one is. This loss of the two SATA drives is totally out of the blue and they have been working fine for many months having being installed at different times. I tried using the windows 7 installation disk but it eventually gets to a BSOD.
Any suggestions? I am thinking of resetting the CMOS if there is a suitable jumper on the mobo or using the default factory bios setting.
HELP!!!!!
P.S. The time is correct which perhaps implies the internal battery is OK?

 

Greetings, Tobster.

Sounds like the update may have corrupted the SATA drivers. Did the drives come with an installation disk?

You might still try resetting the BIOS - if there's no jumper, pull the CMOS battery for several minutes, then reinstall it and see if your symptoms change.

 

no I installation disc, i seem to remember just plug n play. a CMOS/BIOS reset is top of my list of things to try tonight.

 

Yeah, that might do the trick. Good luck - keep us posted.

 

well a CMOS reset (if i did it correctly - moved a jumper on the motherboard) had no effect. Any other ideas?

 

Not sure why it would change in the BIOS but do you have anything like SATA Spread Spectrum Clocking listed in the BIOS? If you do, make sure it is disabled and then see if the BIOS detects the drives.

 

tgell
I shall have a look. the next plan is to remove the drives and see if they work in another pc. at least i will know then know they work. does removing the battery perform the same task as the cmos reset (JIC I haven't done that properly) or am I going to create more problems?

 

Removing the CMOS battery will reset the BIOS as long as there is no power to the computer.

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/bios/bios_password.htm

 

For clarification, which drive is your root drive: the IDE, or one of the SATAs?

 

caliban
if by root drive you mean where the OS system is installed I suppose it must be one of the SATA drives as it will not boot and eventualy goes into bios setup. It does however know that the sole IDE drive is present.
Unless someone says otherwise, I shall try removing the battery to see if that does anything.

 

well removing the battery for half an hour had no more effect than moving the cmos jumper - drat. Anyone got any good idea what I should try next?

 

hurray, it booted up BUT at least one of the SATA drives is definately AWOL as some of my links are not working. To say the least I am nervous to switch/restart the machine but clearly I need to take the SATA drive(s) out and try them somewhere else. Shame as they are my newest drives. IF I find that they are indeed functioning what is my next port of call on this PC?

 

Good job.

What are the makes and model #s of the drives? You might research the OEM, as most drive manufacturers offer free diagnostics tools for their hardware.

 

thanks for the input Caliban, BUT surely until the PC/Bios detects the drives then dignostics will not work? Anyway i think one is Western digital. However I am open to most suggestions. Ooops, supper has been called.

 

Well, supper is important.

Many diagnostics tools are bootable, so you'll be able to access them in a pre-Windows environment.

 

roast pork went down v well.
I do have the ultimate boot disk which has alote of hard drive tools. It certainly failed to find the SATA discs before I got the PC to boot up - perhaps it will be different now.

 

well I bravely switched off the PC to go in and try the SATA drives on another PC. Well to my surprise one of the SATA drives (WD1TB) is actually working (as in registers on windows explorer) but is not showing on the bios. However the other SATA drive was still unplugged after all my fiddling - doh. I thought that must be the 'fault', recontected it, turned on pc and the pc has failed to boot up again!!! Unplugged 'faulty' SATA drive, and, still no boot, with PC asking me for boot disc. So in summary I have a PC with 2 SATA drives and one IDE drive, but only one of the SATA drives is registering in windows explorer. I have tried different cables etc with the non working drive to no avail. I have tried the UBCD and the WD HD disgnositcs fails to find the 'faulty' HD.
HELP!!!

 

This is in another machine, not the original?

 

sorry, this is on the original machine. The drives are all partitioned so i got a little confused what I actaully had in there, especially as I thought I had 4 drives but really only had three - 2 SATA and one IDE. So have manged to get the two drives to work but even with the third drive disconnected the pc fails to boot and keeps asking for a system disc AND I can't see the SATA disc in the bios.

 

Strange symptoms - it's almost like you've got multiple issues going on.

 

indeed, at this is all happened out of the blue following a windows update install/reboot. most peculiar.I shall try to get the 'dead' drive working on another pc tonight.

 

just an update. Well i tried the failed SATA drive in another pc and it also failed to find it, though it can be clearly felt to be spinning up. I contacted Seagate and they think it is a hard drive firmware glitch as this drive (Maxtor DiamondMax 22) has a known problem and have asked me to return it to them to have a new firmware flashed on it at their cost. No data should be lost. I shall say a quick prayer that this solves the problem. The pc is working fine without this drive BUT I can't get it to boot properly. It gets stuck 9or atleast pauses for some time) at the post screen then tries to boot from the CD, fails and then asks for the system disc. A fix/bodge i am using involves inserting the universal boot CD in, and use the "boot next device" option. This has worked every time and gets me through to the boot option for either windows XP or Windows 7. I have looked in the bios and still the other working SATA drive (WD500gb) is not detected but the IDE one is. It got me thinking - are SATA drives supposed to be detectable/visible in the bios (Foxconn mobo)?

 

Until you have this fixed, maybe you can set the CD as the first boot device in BIOS. It won't fix anything, but it might make the boot process a little bit faster.