Legit Reviews

ok I had a computer built everything was working fine outside the case. I moved everything into the case and now the hard drive wont power on. I tried a few different power connectors but for some reason it wont spin up when booting. I am going to try and find another drive just to be sure I can rule out a bad hard drive. The PC boots until it needs a boot drive. I dont see the drive in the BIOS either.

Is there something simple I could be missing causing this to happen?

What a bummer. Could be alot of things all simple. Unplug power supply then reconnect after a few min.. Check settings in bios afterward. Re-check connections. look for drivers. pull out battery and put back in. Just go through the usual stuff. I'm sure it's something simple.

yeah thats my next step to pull everything out and see if it works outside the case. its just strange because its like the hard drive isnt getting power at all.

I've had this happen to me before, and it turned out that the drive just up and completely died on me. I found the same model hard drive online and replaced the drives PCB/power and data board, and the drive worked long enough for me to clone to another HDD. Not saying that it's the best solution, but if you go through all the previously mentioned steps and it's still not working, I'd think it safe to call it a spontaneous drive death.

If you hit that point and want to try replacing the board, just make sure to get the exact same model, and even that isn't guaranteed to get the drive back. With HDD's so cheap these days, a replacement would probably be the least cumbersome fix.

Also, that repaired HDD still works and passes its manufacturers drive test, even if I'm just keeping it as a just-in-case drive.

its a old 80GB IDE drive that basically was just a fresh install so no data really just windows 7, at least thats good if the drive is bad.

Try Ultmate Boot CD and run a SMART test on the drive. If you don't get any errors you might want to use the manufacturer's software to do a low level format.

the bios doesnt even detect the drive so I am not sure I could run a SMART test.. but Ill give it a try - As soon as I hooked up a different hard drive it booted right up.

Sounds like it's bit the dust. If you can try hooking it up externally (i.e. USB or Firewire) and see if it does anything. If nothing else once it gets power you should be able to listen if the platters are moving and if the head is ticking away.

yeah when it has power it does nothing.. not even a click.

My non-professional opinion - it's dead.

I really wonder what happened though - I had just shut down the PC moved the parts to the case and it was dead.. It was a pretty old hard drive that was sitting for years before I started using it again the other day.. I am guessing it just seized up after the last shutdown.

Try this.. Take the drive and gently bump the sides of the drive with the palm of your hand. Maybe the head is stuck. At this point it won't make it any worse.

bag it and throw it in the freezer

I have gotten one hard drive to work by putting it in the freezer...