Hard Drive Crash?

Endomatic

I think my hard drive may have crashed.

During bootup the comp goes through the regular paces but stalls during the end and asks me to insert a disk into a bootable device or connect a bootable device. No setup changes have been made, and all the rest of my hardware seems to work fine.

I hear nothing in terms of spinning coming from the drive and don't see any lights, but i don't think there were any on the drive in the first place.

I have a small LCD display attached to the motherboard which stalls on "Detect IDE" and doesn't progress. IDE is the connector for the HDD right?

So I need a hard drive if correct. Can I just get an external one? In order to get a normal drive into place I'll have to disassemble a lot of the computer itself, like the mobo, to get a new HD in there. Is there any downsides to using an external HD?

Or could my problem be something else?

TychoCelchuuu

Your computer should not need you to disassemble the mobo to get a hard drive in there, especially because the motherboard is one piece that cannot be disassembled.

In any case, it does sound like something is up with your HD. The first step is to make sure no cables have come loose. The second is seeing if any other computers will recognize it. If nothing recognizes the hard drive it's probably toast and thus time to buy another one. External hard drive would not be an option for this step. You need an internal as your main drive.

Endomatic

alright thanks.

None of the connections are loose, I've checked that.

I'll go get a new one.

TychoCelchuuu

You skipped a step.

Endomatic

I can't test it really, i don't have another computer to use. I'm using a laptop now.

TychoCelchuuu

You could buy an enclosure, docking port, or cable connector for your hard drive so you can hook it up to your laptop and check it out, but if you're convinced it's dead then go right ahead.

mightyjongyo

I know you said you didn't change anything in the settings, but it might be worth checking the BIOS anyways - see if the boot order was changed, or something.

But, yea, it's probably no good. If you have another port open you can try plugging it into another port too?

Endomatic

Got a new harddrive, and it's all up and running now.

Thanks for the info and advice.