Hard drive failure

[ron]

I have a laptop that displays the following message:

 

Primary hard disk drive 0 not found

 

No bootable devices.

 

 

 

Does anyone have any ideas or is the hard drive ready for replacement? (or could it be a motherboard issue?)

[Haptic]

I have a laptop that displays the following message:

 

Primary hard disk drive 0 not found

 

No bootable devices.

 

 

 

Does anyone have any ideas or is the hard drive ready for replacement? (or could it be a motherboard issue?)

 

how old is the laptop bud ? also does the hard drive activity light come on at all ?

[ron]

how old is the laptop bud ? also does the hard drive activity light come on at all ?

 

It's around 5-6 years old, it's a DELL Latitude D505 (in fact I have 2 laptops of the same spec with the same fault)

 

One of the laptops I looked at around 4 months ago and I'm not sure how I got it working but I was able to re-install windows and it worked ever since but then I got it back yesterday with the same fault and now this morning I have been giving another laptop with the same fault!

 

Yes the hard drive activity light is on.

 

HELP!!!

Edited January 8, 2010 by ron

[Haptic]

It's around 5-6 years old, it's a DELL Latitude D505 (in fact I have 2 laptops of the same spec with the same fault)

 

One of the laptops I looked at around 4 months ago and I'm not sure how I got it working but I was able to re-install windows and it worked every since but then I got it back yesterday with the same fault and now this morning I have been giving another laptop with the same fault!

 

Yes the hard drive activity light is on.

 

HELP!!!

 

i would start by removing the hard drive and reconnecting just incase of loose connection, then put the bios into factory default settings and see if you can see then , is the drive showing in the bios , is it just in post that it state 0 drive found ?

[apoth0r]

Check the boot order - HDD first

 

Ensure you do not have a bootable floppy or Cd in the drive

 

Try swapping the drive with a 'known' working one

Try the drive in another laptop that hasn't any problems

 

Try removing one of the memory modules if it has more than one

 

*as Simon mention* check the immediate connections between the IDE cable and the hard disk.

- If not the problem, take the keyboard off and check the connections across the mainboard.

 

Look for a BIOS update on the manufacturers website

Turn off BIOS-antivirus in the BIOS menu

[ICT_GUY]

Likely to be duff HD, but the connections get very very suspect at that age. Clean and reseat. Or plug into a usb reader.

[ron]

It's the hard drives that carry the fault. I would usually do 2-way-swaps but I have had trouble locating another laptop of the same model/spec but I've managed to find one and it actually works and I swapped the hard drives and the fault carried over.

 

We will need 2 replacements and the cheapest I have found is:

 

dabs.com - Western Digital 80GB Scorpio Blue 5400RPM IDE 8MB (WD800BEVE)

 

at under £40 each but we cannot purchase from the company as we are a school and they only take card payments, do you have any ideas where I can get the hard drives at a reasonable price via a purchase order that will also be compatible/recommended by dell?

 

Thanks!

[Haptic]

It's the hard drives that carry the fault. I would usually do 2-way-swaps but I have had trouble locating another laptop of the same model/spec but I've managed to find one and it actually works and I swapped the hard drives and the fault carried over.

 

We will need 2 replacements and the cheapest I have found is:

 

dabs.com - Western Digital 80GB Scorpio Blue 5400RPM IDE 8MB (WD800BEVE)

 

at under £40 each but we cannot purchase from the company as we are a school and they only take card payments, do you have any ideas where I can get the hard drives at a reasonable price via a purchase order that will also be compatible/recommended by dell?

 

Thanks!

 

how about we supply them , we supply many edugeek members who are happy with our prices and service, now we might not be as cheap as dabs be we are value added resellers who know what we are talking about, if you would like a quote then pm me your full details over and ill work on this straight away for you bud,

[ron]

Will do!

[Haptic]

Will do!

 

in fact fella we can do those for £39+vat Each Unit with Free Delivery

[ron]

in fact fella we can do those for £39+vat Each Unit with Free Delivery

 

I've sent you a PM with my details, let me know if you need further info, if you email me the quote I'll pass it by the head and if all is well were good to go. (Yesterday it was only one hard drive and she was a little bit concerned as the laptop is 6 years old but it's cheaper than a brand new laptop by any means and other than this issue the laptops still work well)

[paulst30]

Just to add my thoughts. I would normally stick the drive into an external caddy and connect it to a computer just to check you can get access to files to back them up, however if this doesn't work its goosed. I have heard that you can swap the controller board with the exact model drive and it works, however its a pretty expensive test. However a little expense to save the data.

[pwds]

If you want to check the health of a HDD then SeaTools is an obvious choice for Seagate and Maxtor drives, but in my experience works with most drives regardless of manufacturer.

[Finch7]

Had 3 D500 and 3 D505s do this in the last two days. Very suspect so many in so little time.