• Hard drive not detected in BIOS, but only in some computers
    5 replies, posted
I have an old IDE Hitachi Deskstar 80GB that just all of a sudden stopped being detected in the BIOS on its original PC. It also isn't detected on a Dell P4 system, and my AMD Athlon II. However, the catch is, that it is detected in both an Pentium II system (albeit it can't figure out the size, because it can't boot from drives that big) and some old AMD system. It even tries to boot on the AMD. Now, getting stuff off the drive isn't an issue. But I wanted to know why that is. And possibly, if there is a way to get windows xp on the Hitachi to boot even slightly on the AMD. I mainly wanted to see if I could retrieve some Outlook account details. Not really a big deal if it's not really possible, I'll just have to call our ISP to get the password reset.
It's an old hitachi deathstar. The drives are timebombs.
[QUOTE=spinpoint F3;39777082]It's an old hitachi deathstar. The drives are timebombs.[/QUOTE] Fair enough. Though it seems strange that the drive might as well be dead to some computers, but works fine in others.
Some IDE controllers have better tolerance to weak drive signalling than others. That's probably why you're seeing it act erratic.
[QUOTE=MIPS;39778127]Some IDE controllers have better tolerance to weak drive signalling than others. That's probably why you're seeing it act erratic.[/QUOTE] So I'm assuming the older ones are a bit more tolerant? That's interesting.
I've noticed this too with some old IDE disks (albeit much older than 80gb would be) - they work fine in their original motherboard, but will click or not be detected when hooked up to a modern motherboard
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