Hard drive does not exist

[jogjr11]

I am working on a laptop for a friend of mine. it is a HP pavillion dv7. When I turn it on it says to load an operating system and that the hard drive does not exist. I can not run any hard drive tests on it. I do know that the hard drive connector works because I have put one of my hard drives on it to test. I tried to load windows 8 onto it and it does not show any drive for me to install it on. Can anyone help me with this problem please.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

So it see's your drive but not the origional drive? Did the drive just die? if so replace the hard drive.

 

[jogjr11]

So it see's your drive but not the origional drive? Did the drive just die? if so replace the hard drive.

Correct, it sees my drive but not the original. When I got the computer it was doing this. My friend told me that it was working before this happened.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

I would replace the drive If you can afford a SSD it would be a nice upgrade. And the cost has come down allot on solid state drives...