Hard Drive Wasn't Found Once

[stfoskey12]

So I have a five year old Dell Inspiron 1525 that generally runs fine, albeit a little slowly. A couple times it has run very slowly and eventually blue-screened. About ten minutes after I turned it on yesterday, though, it said it couldn't recognize the hard drive (it started up fine, but stopped working while I was doing something else; I had only tried to open Firefox, which works today). I went through the diagnostic tests, but they weren't very helpful. However when I turned it on today, it ran fine.
Based on what information I have provided, do you think this will be a recurring problem?

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Make sure you BIOS is set properly.

 

[GoodGame]

You might also check that the pin selector (back of hard drive) on the hard drive hasn't been altered/jiggled out, but probably check BIOS settings first.

If it's older hard drive, it might be a problem with master/slave selection of the hard drives (combination of physically set by pin selector and also by BIOS setting). Probably it should just be reading cable select if it's not a very old hard drive, so set it to cable select so it lets the cable decide which of your hard drives is dominant.

 

[ense7en]

So I have a five year old Dell Inspiron 1525 that generally runs fine, albeit a little slowly. A couple times it has run very slowly and eventually blue-screened. About ten minutes after I turned it on yesterday, though, it said it couldn't recognize the hard drive (it started up fine, but stopped working while I was doing something else; I had only tried to open Firefox, which works today). I went through the diagnostic tests, but they weren't very helpful. However when I turned it on today, it ran fine.
Based on what information I have provided, do you think this will be a recurring problem?

Have important data on there that's not backed up?

Back it up!

There's a very good possibility the drive is failing/dying...this tends to be very common with hard drives over time.
Your post screams failing drive to me based on my many years diagnosing thousands of them, but more in depth diagnostics would be required to say for certain.

There are many bootable diagnostic tests out there, though far fewer that will work with notebooks like that unless you can set the SATA mode to IDE in the BIOS.

MHDD is excellent if you can get it to run (you'll need BIOS to be set to IDE/compatibility mode for it to have a chance to work. If it loads, hit F4 then F4 again to run the test.

Make sure you BIOS is set properly.

Why would the BIOS be set wrong on a notebook based on the OP?

Resetting to defaults is okay to do, sure, but it will be unnecessary in this situation, as there are basically no settings in that BIOS anyway.

You might also check that the pin selector (back of hard drive) on the hard drive hasn't been altered/jiggled out, but probably check BIOS settings first.

If it's older hard drive, it might be a problem with master/slave selection of the hard drives (combination of physically set by pin selector and also by BIOS setting). Probably it should just be reading cable select if it's not a very old hard drive, so set it to cable select so it lets the cable decide which of your hard drives is dominant.

It's a SATA drive.
Reseating/reconnecting the drive is not a bad idea though; it's possible it has become slightly loose/dislodged.

 

[leif erikson]

Agree with ense7en, sounds like a failing drive to me as well.

I had three of them earlier in the year and they all showed similar symptoms. Thankfully Western Digital replaced them all, but it was a nightmare.

Get valuable data backed up!

Good Luck.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Why would the BIOS be set wrong on a notebook based on the OP?

Resetting to defaults is okay to do, sure, but it will be unnecessary in this situation, as there are basically no settings in that BIOS anyway..

Oh, it was a several months back now and I forget the exact details but I was doing some rig customizing and had changed some bios settings to raid config or something. Resetting it did not do the trick strangely enough and I was stuck with a HDD that my bios could see but the windows installer could not.

 

[stfoskey12]

I did back everything up, but it seems to be working fine now. While the computer couldn't find the hard drive, I figured it was completely dead and tried to change a few settings at random in a basic setup mode because I didn't see any harm in doing so, and I wonder if I unintentionally fixed it while doing that. However, I think I will check the BIOS and pin selector if it fails again.