HD Problems....

[BottleRocket]

So earlier I posted about beeping MB, but I got that fixed. But now when I turn on the computer, it gives me the "System Boot Failure, Instert Boot Disk and press Enter". I already looked up so older posts, and I am going to try and see what is booting first in the BIOS, and some other things that I read in some threads. But if I have to go through a boot disk to get to Windows, will my HD be erased? I don't have any of my pictures back-up, which are most important to me. If I still have to go through boot disk, should I take my HD somewhere to get data recovery?

 

[Law]

What has happen to your system that would cause the message? That message usually indicates that there's a non-bootable floppy disk in the computer. You should also check the BIOS to see if the hard drive is detected and the boot priority to see which device is booting before the hard drive.

 

[BottleRocket]

Well, in my last topic, I just put on some new Arctic Silver 5, and then the CPU wasn't working, I was getting a beep code, but I figured that out. I don't think anything happened to the disk. I just put the computer together back together like normal, and it came up with that "system disk error" message. I read in older posts about what you just said. So next time I take a look at it, that is what I am going to do. Could that be a reasonable estimation of what happened: it's just not reading the HD first to boot from? I just want to make sure I can get to my back to my files, cause I plan on backing up everything ASAP.

 

[Law]

Does the BIOS detect the hard drive being installed? I would check that you installed the IDE cable correctly. The boot priority only really matter if you like to boot from a bootable disk like a floppy or CD/DVD before the OS loads therefore the hard drive would be after these two. You can still recover your files as long as you havenÂ’t formatted it yet or deleted anything. You can usually slave it on another computer and run some file recovery software.

 

[BottleRocket]

Yeah, I just checked that last night. The BIOS does not recognize the HD. I even swapped the IDE cable with the one connected to my optical drives. And I knew that cable worked becauce the BIOS recognized those drives. Before and after I swapped the IDE cables, the BIOS did not recognize the HD.......what to do now?

 

[LiQuid STATus]

Double check the jumper settings, make sure any other device sharing the IDE cable is set accordingly. It could even be a bad hard drive. Windows is looking for the boot file to load the OS, and it can't find it on the hard drive. I'm guessing you have two hard drives installed on your PC, make sure the old one is the master, so Windows can find that boot file it needs.

 

[BottleRocket]

No I only have one HD. I have two optical drives though, and I know those jump settings are correct. I just don't understand what happened to this one HD. It's not like I took it out with a hammer and smashed it or soemthing. If it is physical damage to the drive I don't get it, because I was very gentle when I was moving to case around and taking parts in and out. And like I said before, I switched the IDE cable with one that I know works....so it's not the cable.......