Why is my hard disk not being detected?

my hard disk is not detected by stystem.what could i do..also i have checked the setup but they are showing physical drive not installed

This question was answered on December 17, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Is the computer beeping?

Refer to beep code chart for answer: http://www.pctechbytes.com/bios.htm

Open the case a make sure the jumpers are set correctly A single drive should always be set to MASTER unless specified as SINGLE by some manufacturers The jumper is the small plastic clip on the rear of the drive Master, Single, Slave and Cable Select are the usual choices Slave will be used if you already have a hard drive attached to the same cable Cable Select will be used by both drives on the cable and determined by their position on the cable.

If the drive is still not detected, you will need to enter the BIOS setup and manually input the drive's information for the sectors, cylinders, etc.. This info is usually printed on the hard drive itself However, it may be necessary to sometimes go to the manufacturer's website for these details.

A hard drive will not boot if it is not set up correctly You must first configure the hardware and software You do this by setting the jumpers in the rear of the drive, then configuring the device in the BIOS setup Normally, the drive will ship with the jumper set to MASTER However, if this is the only drive on the ribbon cable, some hard drive manufacturers require that the pins for the SINGLE setting be jumped.

The BIOS will most likely AUTO detect the drive But it will sometimes be necessary to specify the Sectors, Cylinders, etc This information is often printed directly on the drive, so write this down before installing the drive in the case Or you can visit the manufacturer's website.

If the Boot sequence is not set properly in BIOS, the computer will attempt to load the first device, which might be a floppy or CD drive If there are disks in those drives, an Operating System will not be found and the computer will produce an error.

There also must be an active partition on the drive This is performed by using the FDISK utility.

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Posted by Henry of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on December 17, 2004

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