Internal Hard Drive not detected after power outage

Hi there.

So I've posted this on this Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2ecg57/hard_drive_failure_after_brief_power_outage/

Also a Vine to make it as brief as possible. http://vine.co/v/MLP15FmFJm7

Basically: Fiance's computer was on. Power went out. Error on restart (shown in video). Tried to repair with windows xp disc. Hard drive not detected.

7:40 for BIOS screen in the longer video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_sSo00l_A0&feature=player_detailpage#t=460

 

Since you state that you're not allowed to do anything that involves moving the computer or opening the case, there's nothing we can suggest. I was going to suggest you pull the hard drive and try it in another computer with an EIDE/PATA connection (XP doesn't natively support SATA) to see if the other computer detects the drive or to put it in a USB enclosure and connect it to another computer. But, since you can't...

 

Standard practice is to remove the harddrive and format and MC said you need to know the harddrive is working properly, this is best done in another computer.

First place to check is the bios, hit del as computer starts and enter standard cmos features, your hard drive should be listed, if it isn't the drive is completely dead or the connection is faulty.If your hard drive is listed it now needs formatting, formatting wipes the drive and puts it in a format the windows setup disk can see,I think this is best done by connecting the drive to another computer as it rules everything out.

If you don't want to remove the drive I would try a more modern copy of windows setup such as what comes with windows 7 so grab a copy of that if possible, you can also burn a copy of linux mint, run it and format the drive that way.

You can also use ultimate boot disk, to test and format the drive.


All assuming the drive isn't dead.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ultimate_boot_cd_(ubcd).html

 

As Rikky said, pulling the drive and trying it on another computer will be the best but, as he also said, using some Live Linux CD/DVD may allow you to "see" the drive (it will show as SDA0 or SDA1) and be able to retrieve your fiance's data. After that, you'll probably need to do a clean install of XP Home, device drivers and apps.