If your hard drive does not show up in BIOS of the computer, it will not be visible to Windows. There are several scenarios for this type of problem and we will try to address some of these along with their resolution. Unfortunately, hard drives are a commodity and need to be treated as such. If you have a hard drive running in your computer it is only a matter of time before it fails.
However, if you purchase a new drive, it should show up in the BIOS. If the hard drive does not show up in BIOS, gather as much information about your PC as you can and write it down. Such as the model and manufacturer of the drive, the manufacturer of the computer or motherboard, and the BIOS manufacturer as well as the version. The latter can often be found splashed across the screen when you first boot the PC.
New Hard Drive Does Not Show Up In BIOS
The very first thing to check are the jumpers if you have an IDE drive. An IDE cable can support two devices, one as a Primary and one as a Seconday. These are sometimes referred to as Master and Slave. The jumper pins on the back of the drive should be set to Master for the Primary and Slave for the Secondary. There is also a jumper for Cable Select which recognizes the drives based on their location on the cable. For simplicity, stick with the Master and Slave setup. If you have a SATA drive, you do not need to worry about jumpers.
If the jumpers are correct, but the new drive is still not showing up, go into the BIOS setup and make sure the drive detection is set to AUTO. If this doesn’t work, you can try going to the manufacturer’s website and get the breakdown of Sectors, Cylinders, etc and manually input the figures. But if it doesn’t auto-detect the drive, it probably will not detect it manually, either.
The next step in this case is to flash the BIOS. Check the motherboard or computer manufacturer for a newer version. Firmware updates will often correct this type of issue as well as improve the current functionality of your hardware.
Older Hard Drive Does Not Show Up In BIOS
If you had an existing drive and it and hard drive does not show up in BIOS anymore, the drive is probably dead. You can try changing cables and trying a different power connector, but if the drive worked and then no longer works, this likely means the drive has failed. Drives can stop working due to an electrical or mechanical problem. A mechanical problem with the hard drive usually manifests itself in grinding or squeaking noises, random crashes or data loss. Electrical problems can happen instantly, without warning.
Drive Shows Up In BIOS But Not In Windows
This is the more typical scenario. If the drive does report properly in BIOS, but not in Windows, then the drive has lost its partitioning. You can try right-clicking My Computer, select Manage and look for the Disk Management section. From here, you can partition and format the drive. If the drive had data on it that you want to try and recover, we recommend NOT trying to partition or reformat the drive, as this data can be lost forever. Instead, run file recovery software to attempt to recover the data first.
Popular Hard Drive Utilities
The following hard drive utilities are hard drive-specific. They can help you diagnose problems, copy files, and perform partitioning and formatting functions.
Western Digital Data Lifeguard
If you have questions why a hard drive does not show up in BIOS or in Windows, join our forums or read our other hardware tutorials for more information.
hey guys.sumtimes my computer goes to a blue screen and says theres a critical error and your computer needs to be restarted.so it restarts.than it goes to black screen says no hard drive detected.
i reboot buy powering off and it works again.
i went to bios mode to see the order of the booting.and its all in order.
i still don’t understand why it still does that.
i have acer and i have vista
Becasue it is stating “No Hard Drive Detected” I am concerned your drive might be failing. If you know the model of the drive, visit the manufacturer’s website and download their free utility to check the health of the drive.
I have Vista & XP on my hard drive one is visible at start up and the other dont.
When i open my computer i see that both systems are on the hard drive, can you help me please?
Sounds like something has happened to the boot loader. If you once got a option to choose between the two when booting up and now it only boots directly into one, then an entry must have been removed that tells Windows to ask you. I recommend you join our forums and this question there–it might take some time to sort this out.
Hi, I think I have a bit of a problem… I have an old Dell Dimension XPS with 2 hard drives. The main one, from 1998, works perfectly and almost silently. The second, however, from 2000, started making squealing sounds and frequent hollow-sounding quite high-pitched clicks. Now it isn’t detected. It’s spinning silently in the computer now, and isn’t detected. It’s a MPE3064AT made in 2000 by Fujitsu. Is it dead? Can I get any data from it?
When the drive starts making noises, this usually means immanent death. It’s a physical problem–maybe a bearing has seized or read/write head fell off. If the has absolute critical data on it, you might be able to recover the data using a professional service that specializes in doing that.
Hi there,
I have a dell inspiron 1525 who already burnt once the HDD and now it did it again. HDD. Any idea of why this is happening? there is nothing wrong with the laptop, no noises made by the HDD, it works perfectly and when i try to boot it up the HDD is not found anymore and I have to buy a new one.
It’s not unusual for laptop drives to die. If it is happening frequently, I’d be concerned, however. Could be a problem with the motherboard.
hey I have a really stupid problem
I have a drive that doesnt show up in an alienware laptop. BUT ALL OTHER DRIVES DO!! But it does show up in any other computer.
This is that thing someone said CANNOT happen!!!!! WELL TO ME EVERYTHING THAT CANNOT HAPPEN DOES!!!!!
Mike, please post in our forums as this could take a while to troubleshoot and that is a better venue: http://www.pctechbytes.net/
Hey I’m hoping to get some answers here since I’ve done all i can to my knowledge of this sort of stuff. My computer worked fine i have had it for less than 2 years. It was running windows vista on an XFX motherboard and western digital SATA hard drive. One day the computer failed to boot and would not go further than the vista “microsoft corporation” green load bar screen at the begginging of boot-up. supidly i turned the computer off by holding my power button, this i did a few times since it continually got stuck on that screen. now the hard drive isnt recognized by the bios, will not show up under my computer when set as a slave on a different desktop and will not show up under my computer when attached to a USB data bridge. I downloaded a western digital lifeguard hard drive diagnostic boot file and when i ran it on startup it said no western digital drive detected. the drive spins, but apparently isnt recognized….is it far gone or is there ANY way i can get 2 years worth of vacation and emotionally valuble photos and files off this drive? PLEASE HELP
So you cannot see any of the data under My Computer when attached as a slave?
Have you looked at the settings in the BIOS to make sure the the drive is set to Auto Detect settings? Sometimes you can evn get the exact settings from the hard drive manufacturer and manually input the cylinders, sectors, etc.
At least the drive is spinning up and getting power. I think you will eventually be able to get the info off–one way or another.
Hi,can you help me with this issue..
i have two internal HDDs one is WD(two years old) and a new samsung(master)..
they were both working fine,but yesterday i left the pc on to download a big file.
today i found that my older WD isnt working/spining just as no power is going into it i tried to change cables but still, its the hdd fault.
should i send it for repair or is it dead for good ?! :S
Sorry to hear that. I hope you had backups. If the drive isn’t spinning up and does not show up in the BIOS, it might have died. Have you tried adding it as a master on the secondary controller? Have you tried a different power connector?
yeah i tried both,so bad i didnt have back up it had all my apps and games. :S
thanks btw
hello, need help, been trying fix this for days now!, I have 4 hard drives 2x WD 500GB and 2X Samsung 500GB, SATA port 0 is WD= O/S, “”1 is WD =Programs, “”2 is Samsung= Games, “”3 is Samsung=Films. My 2 WD drives are fine, but the 2 Samsung were the problem, I seemed to have fixed one of the Samsung’s and it shows up in the BIOS and in my Computer/Device Manager. But it is the Samsung with my games on that I’m having the most trouble with, it has shown in my BIOS but usually does not and then in my Computer/Device manager it never shows up on Start up of Vista, but if I put the harddrive in my hotswap bay and slot it out and then in again the Scan for Hardware changes it shows up but always disappears again after my PC has been switched off and on again, when
I can see the harddrive in Vista I can play my Games from it and Copy to it absolutely fine, it also shows up as having no conflicts or faults. I don’t want to be slotting out/in the harddrive every time to get it to work as this is not going to do the connections any good at all. Is there any way I can change how my harddrives show up as Master/Slave in my BIOS as I can not change this, may be that is the problem.The harddrives are all SATA II 3GB/s rated, is the harddrive faulty I’m certain it is not my Motherboard as I have tried my WD drives on all SATA ports and they work great everytime, but if it is the harddrive failing or faulty why does it work fine when I shove it out/in my hotswap bay, doing this seems to start the harddrive spinning, but it won’t work in a normal connected place with a power and SATA connector. Is it a faulty harddrive or something not set correctly. I have tried all the usual stuff, the hardrive is lettered and partitioned, I’m thing maybe it is to do with Master and Slave settings but as they are SATA how do I change between the 2 and what drive should be what, as in which should be Master or Slave, as at the moment my O/S is Master, and the other are all different being both master and Slave, not sure exactly at this minute without looking in the BIOS though, how can I set these?, or don’t I. Ok this post is getting a bit long now, please I desperately need advise. Any ideas, but please explain how to do things clearly if you reply, many thanks. Mark
I have a Dell Vostro 200 that is three years old. The hard drive was a 250 GB and it died so I replaced it with a new hard drive which is 1 TB. I am using a full version of XP Professional as the OS, and after it reformats the drive it starts stopping on some of the files it’s trying to copy. At the end of all that and it says it completed it successfully, I get the blue screen with the following message “STOP: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error\System Root\System 32\ntdll.dll” I have no clue what to try next – any suggestions?
hard disk not detected in bios setup.and change the sata port but same reason.
If this is an old hard drive it might have failed electrically–there’s nothing you can do about that. If this is a new hard drive, join our forums and ask your question there.
hi,my computer is pc:DDDbut always dont find the hard drives(HDD),i dont know how to do next,plz help
If the hard drive is properly connected to the motherboard and it does not appear in the BIOS or does not load Windows, it’s quite possible the hard drive has died. You can try plugging it into a different SATA port on the motherboard, or maybe try swapping the power connected and cable with another SATA device (like the DVD drive) and see if that helps. But if it is not spinning up (is it) then it could be dead.
I have a Sata hdd that shows up in device manager but it doesn’t show up in BIOS or Windows Explorer
This is a second hard drive? Did you look under disk management (right click Computer, select Manage, then Disk management). The drive may need to be partitioned and formatted in order for you to see it. It should still show up under the BIOS, though. weird.
I have a secondary Seagate internal terabyte drive that I am using for media storage. I went to work one yesterday and everything was fine, I left my Windows 7 system running as I usually do. I came home and the screen showed a stalled boot post display, and the last line said `Boot manager not found`. I had to reboot. At that point the bios stopped detecting my second drive and only detected the main drive and my DVD writer.
Not sure why it was rebooting when I wasn`t there to tell it to do so, and also the boot manager message is confusing because that seems like it couldn`t find the C: drive at that point either.
Need help, because I think this might be a mobo problem and not a drive issue. I have been having odd problems for a while, such as drive detection and boot sometimes fails when USB devices are plugged into the mobo… Could it be that some electrical problem is causing my SATA connection not to function rather than this being a dead drive issue? I certainly hope so…
The drives might very well still be good. Since this problem has happened before, I would try the drives in another PC and see if you can get them to recognize the drives. This might be a motherboard problem, but it might also be a power supply problem. If the power supply is insufficient, the drives might be causing it to fail when they begin spinning up.
Old cpu died. Pulled the IDE hard drive out and put it into a new CPU as a 2nd hard drive. I used an IDE to SATA converter to hook it up. But its not showing in the bios.
Are there any jumpers on the drive? If so, remove it.
Hi,I have a 80GB toshiba hdd2d38 hard drive which started to hang recently.after removing its top cover casing and fixing it back,it would run from the bios but when it comes to the windows startup page,it remains like that and I realized that the disk don’t make any sound at that point till I power it off.what should I do resolve the problem?thanks
The top casing of the hard drive? Or the computer? Not really sure what the problem is, but based on the hard drive size, it sounds like an older drive that may have died. If there is data on the drive you need, you can try hooking it up to an external case or installing it as a second drive in a working computer and then pull the data off.