is my hard drive dead?

[DesertChicken]

I bought a HITACHI Deskstar 7K250 80GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 hard drive about 6 months ago. I was surfing the internet today and suddenly my computer kinda froze up. I could still move my mouse and minimize my browser, but my windows taskbar wasn't responding.

I restarted thinking that my browser probably just froze up. When the computer would usually list all the IDE drives, it stopped for a bit. After a while, it'd continue and it'd try to start up as if there wasn't a hard drive in my computer. I restarted and the same thing happened. After it finished scanning for hte hard drive that "wasn't there", I started up the bios. My hard drive wasnt' detected. I've tried reseting the bios to it's original optimized settings. I've tried going into the bios and manually scanning each IDE port for hard drives but no luck. I'm running off my old RAID drive right now, and every thing else in my computer seems to be working fine.

I've concluded that my hard drive is dead and have contacted Newegg.com about the warranty, but I'm not completely sure. Could this kind of thing happen through a virus or spyware? Or should I just ship this thing back to newegg and morn for my lost data?

 

[duffers20]

Check all the cables inside the case just to be sure that they are all ok. Also if it doens't work after that, try the drive on a different IDE channel, and also in another pc. Just a quick question, does the drive make any usual noices when you turn on the pc?

 

[Mongre]

i would say if you hadnt had virus and spyware protection, something could have sacked your system. If you were strict about protection, then the harddrive is good candidate, like he said though it often will make noise before it craps out.

Other than that i would say stock Western Digital from now on. I get a little more mileage out of mine. Get someone down at your local computer shop, or a friends house to hook it up, see if it is...if it pops right up, no problem, then you may look at your motherboard. Assuming, yes that you have everything plugged in. :thumbs:

 

[RazorBlade]

I would probably say that you were, as they call it, "Highjacked". When someone is using your computer parcially, not in complete control, but as a resource. I had it happen once, not very good. I'd be searching for a webpage, and it would change to a different one. So I suggest getting a prgram called "Highjack this" at www.tucows.com . If its still there anyway.

 

[DesertChicken]

I would probably say that you were, as they call it, "Highjacked". When someone is using your computer parcially, not in complete control, but as a resource. I had it happen once, not very good. I'd be searching for a webpage, and it would change to a different one. So I suggest getting a prgram called "Highjack this" at www.tucows.com . If its still there anyway.

Doesn't really explain how my hard drive dissappeared from my bios.

 

[Asus]

When my brother's Maxtor went out it didn't make any sound. That's because the disk inside stopped spinning, it wasn't the head that was the problem (which generally makes the ticking sound of death).

If your harddrive isn't being detected and your bios does an auto detect at startup (like mine does) then it wouldn't show it in bios.

 

[ShinRa]

i had the exact same problem. still do with my raptor drive. what worked for my other drive though was this:

put in ur OS cd
boot ur comp from the cd
choose windows repair
let it do its thing

its probably a corrupt book sector. good luck :thumbs: