Is this hard drive salvageable?

[jbourne84]

After much frustration trying to boot my computer and resetting the CMOS and trying different cables, i cannot get into windows.

The bios detects my hard drive correctly but all the values are zeros. My computer seems to just act like there is no hard drive detected when i tried recovery options off the windows dvd.
(everything was fine until i tried adding a secondary hard drive, then all of a sudden nothing was working correctly)

My plan is now becoming to just buy a new external hard drive and back up everythign onto it, i dont really have access to another desktop so i might just have to pay someone for this...

 

[COLGeek]

You either have a defective HDD or a defective motherboard (contains the on-board IDE and SATA controllers). Do you have SMART enabled in your BIOS? If not, enable it and allow your system to test the status of the HDD.

You could try to use a secondary HDD to re-install Windows to (with the original primary detached). After installation of the OS, updates, AV, etc. you could add the original primary back as a secondary and attempt to retrieve your data.

All dependent on what is actually defective. Good luck!

 

[jbourne84]

trying to install windows on the secondary hard drive is a great idea, should have thought of that. thanks!

Im not familier with the SMART feature, is this a standard motherboard feature?

I have an Abit IP35 Pro xe motherboard

 

[COLGeek]

Yep, standard on most motherboards. You might have to dig around your BIOS to find, but it should be there.