Hard Drive

[T-Rent]

I am working on a Gateway MT6840 and am having hard drive problems... bios will regonize the hard drive as will seatools by seagate (hard dive testing software) but when i boot with linux or win installer it doesnt show a hard drive being connected... any ideas?

 

[AlienMenace]

Have tried changing the ribbon, cable out.

 

[jamesd1981]

i had that problem with an asus netbook, try using HD SHREDDER free edition, it is a boot disc you use at bootup, it will totally wipe you hard drive, the free edition only gives you 1 pass but that should be enough.

 

[johnb35]

Most likely the laptop is running in ahci mode and the windows installer won't see it unless you install the sata controller driver at the beginning. However, since you have a laptop and laptops don't have floppy drives, you are forced to either do one of these 2 options.

1. slipstream the sata controller driver into a new install cd.
2. go into the bios and see if you can change the sata controller setting from raid/ahci to IDE/compatibility and try reinstalling windows.

 

[T-Rent]

Have tried changing the ribbon, cable out.

look at the model number please. it is a laptop and there is no ribbon cable. plus we are in the era of SATA cables. please look before you respond