"Primary Hard Disk Drive 0 Not Found"

faigs

Thats the message I'm getting on my Dell Inspiron 5160 when I try to boot up. The BIOS loading screen nearly reaches the end and then there are two beeps and this message shows up:

"Primary Hard Disk Drive 0 Not Found

No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility"

Its really freaking me out coz I've four years of college work on it and thousands of my girlfriends photos, I'll be dead if I can't recover data from the hard drive.

Does it sound like the drive is dead or just not being read for some reason? There's a clicking noise coming from it...anyone got any suggestions???

Please help!!!

8T8

clicking noise

Very bad news a clicking noise is the tell tale sign of a hardware failure.

What I would do is place the HD in another PC or get another HD to boot Windows from then run file recovery programs to try and get your data off the hard drive.

Test Disk, Restorer 2000, PC File Inspector

You might get lucky and pull the data from the drive.

irishpartyboy

I'd try reseating all the cables, also reset to bios defaults. clicking noises not usually good. u can usually run repair utilities on most hard disk manufacturers. worth checking it out.

faigs

OK, would there be any way I could take the drive out myself and put it in a USB enclosure and try back up from that? I don't really want to screw it up more coz I don't know much about what I'm doing.

Thanks for helping.

8T8

Sure you could try it in an enclosure though if you have a second PC with access to it may be better to directly link it to the SATA controller.

(I'm assuming this is a SATA hard drive so any USB enclosure you use must support SATA hard drives as well)

Dingatron

Unlikely the hard drive is unseated. Had to recover data off a Dell Inspiron 5100 today and they're screwed into place fairly tightly. Boot a "live cd" and see if you can mount it / try it in another laptop / put it in a 2.5 usb hdd enclosure. That don't work try the freezer trick maybe. Clicking noises are bad though.

faigs

Don't really know much about it mate, its a 2.5" enclosure I have for a second HD. I'll open it up and see what I find i guess...the freezer trick???

Dingatron

wwww.Dabs.com sell usb 2.5 enclosures for around €10 or get a 2.5 > 3.5 convertor in maplins and plug it into a PC maybe?

Dingatron

http://www.meetmyattorney.com/slink/mt-archives/000275.html

Pretty much a last resort though. Can work long enough to get the data backed up.

faigs

Would it be any use to drop it in to PC World and pay €50 to get a data recovery? What do they do to recover the data? Would I be just as well off taking the drive out and trying it in an external USB case? I've never opened up a laptop/PC before!

mr_disc

faigs wrote:

thousands of my girlfriends photos
Please help!!!

leche solara

faigs wrote:

Would it be any use to drop it in to PC World and pay €50 to get a data recovery? What do they do to recover the data?

But remember Gary Glitter!!!

faigs

I think I'll be alright there, no kiddie porn, hopefully they'll just ignore the regular porn anyway

Anyone know if the PC World data recovery would work?