Is my hard drive toast?

O

oregon

Active Member
I bought an OEM hard drive link off Newegg... I'm thinking it's faulty. I just finished putting together a new comp, with almost all new parts. I don't have an OS yet, so I downloaded Ubuntu, put it on a live CD, and booted into that. It loaded mostly correctly, so I click install, and go through the program until it searches for a partition. It didn't find any though. This worried me, so I tried again with Ubuntu text version, and still nothing. Then I went into my BIOS and looked at the IDE controllers or whatever. It allows you to configure the IDE device. I did this on all of them, but the drive wouldn't show up. My DVD drive does though, so I don't think it's the MOBO.

At this point, can I safely say the drive is faulty? Or should I still try and troubleshoot?
 
Double check to make sure it's all hooked up properly before returning anything, but if the drive is getting power and doesn't spin up then you know somethings wrong with it
 
First off, are you using the 40 GB drive when you try to install? If so unplug it. The comb through your Bios settings looking for anything Sata related and double check the value. Make sure everything is enabled.

As crazy as this sounds, double check your ram. Open up that manual and make sure you have the ram in the correct positions if running dual channel. I have had some really wacky results when using the wrong slots with dual-channel enabled.

And on one of my older boards (This may not apply) I had a secondary screen after Post and the normal bios screen that would allow me to configure my Sata settings almost like it was an add in card. See if you get to a screen like that. One last thing you might try is using a different power connector. If it has a 4 pin try a 4 pin, or try another Sata power connector.
 
I'm almost positive it spins, and I am using the right cable. It just won't recognize. I'll try using different connectors, and meticulously comb through my Bios. Hopefully a friend of mine will help me out though.
 
do you have a working PC you could test the drive in?
ie, one with windows and sata ports.

if anything, it would tell you if the problem is the drive or the pc.

if the windows pc detects the drive, then its either an issue with the settings or the motherboard
if the windows pc doesn't see it either, it might just be a bad drive.
 
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