Computer has been working just fine for several years and is usually left on 24/7. Last night all SATA drives (2 hard drives and DVD burner) are not recognized when I went to wake it up. I can hear the hard drives spin up, I have switched cables and ports, rebooted umpteen times. Video works as I get the UEFI BIOS setup screen. Nothing is getting any drive to be recognized. Any ideas?
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connect to another PC to see if they still work. your board's SATA ports may be fried.
Laurence I
if any of the drives have previously worked whilst connected to that mainboard, then you need to connect and test each independently. It is worth checking the PSU voltages are correct ast provided at the power cable for the drive. You may need to remove any ancillary cards fitted to pci slots. it would be wise to to switch the pc to booting a CDrom (a clean OS) whilst you do this eg hiren's booted to MiniXP. Disconnecting a drive means BOTH cables. A single drive could be faulty and drag the voltages down in the system. For the BIOS to NOT show the drive, you should first check the setting of the port that the drive is connected to is set to AUTO. *** note the latest (last) update to w7 may not detect some older drives.
Anonymous
hmmmm, when I've had drives not show up, it was either the SATA cable or the SATA power connector. In your case I would look at changing the power connectors or possibly test with a different power supply. You really shouldn't have 3 drives connected on one SATA power sting, but if you do then this could have overloaded the string.
In one system I have, there were 4 drives connected to one SATA cable power string and this fried the string. Fortunately this happened on a modular power supply.
The PCH..... known as the Southbridge chipset in older computers controls the SATA and USB ports. If you have USB ports that aren't working then my guess would be is the PCH is on it's way out and you would need to replace the motherboard in order to solve the problem.
VP
It would be rare for 2 HDDs to go out at the same time.
1a. Have you tried unplugging the 2nd drive and DVD player -- and only connecting the boot drive?
1b. What date & time does your BIOS think it is?
2. Have you considered connecting one or both drives to a different system (externally) to see if they still work? (You'd need to get a USB HDD External Enclosure.)
3. Have you considered trying to boot up from a USB stick/drive? (You'd need to have Windows on a USB stick, of course.)
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Change your BIOS battery.
Install your backup.