Is my hard drive dead?

zulu9812

The Newbie Nightmare
Joined
Jan 29, 2002
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So one of my PCs won't boot. The system drive is a Kingston SSD that is viewable in BIOS and the advanced startup menu, but I can see that it's not being recogised during the boot process. In fact, none of the boot drive options are being used - it's jumping to some fictional PATA HD-DVD optical drive that just isn't there. Is this Window's way of telling me that my hard drive is dead or is there another reason for the failure to boot?
 
It sounds more like a PSU/mobo/BIOS/CPU/memory problem to me. If you put a boot CD into your CD/DVD drive, and select that to be booted first in your BIOS and it skips it, there is definitely something other than your hard drive that is acting funky.

Try resetting your BIOS first.

You can download bootable CD ISOs from the internet that contain basic diagnostics. I'd start from there.

But if you can't even get that to work, disconnect everything else to minimize power consumption and see if you can boot it then.

If that doesn't work you can try getting a new PSU from someplace, like Best Buy, which will take it back if it doesn't solve your problem. Or use the one from your PC that works if it is a more powerful machine and you feel, er, adventurous.

If that doesn't work you have a bad mobo or CPU. Try Newegg, Tiger, or Amazon for a cheap combo. Just keep in mind that if you get a more powerful one than you already have, you might need that new PSU after all.

If you need any more help or suggestions PM me. I rarely access this forum.
 
In my opinion, we must first eliminate the logical error of file system or a physical problem with the disk (bad sectors). To get started, try to boot from the Live CD and make chekdisk (verification of the file system and the disk surface).
 
He apparently claims he can't even successfully boot.
 
For the record, I ended up swapping out the hard drive and installing new OS. Crude, but effective. Have moved the SSD to a different PC and tried to reinitialise it as a data drive, but it does seem to be dead.
 
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