The system does not see the hard disk: possible causes and solutions to the problem

Some users sometimes encounter the fact that the system does not see the hard disk, not only connected as an additional device, but also an already installed hard drive on which the operating system is located. With what it can be connected and how to eliminate such a problem? Next, several basic solutions are proposed, which in most cases should help. True, you first have to find out the true cause of the failure.

Why does not the system see the hard drive?

As the most common reason for such failures, most professionals tend to call improperly connecting the hard drive to plugged to the motherboard. However, even with the correct connection, a situation may arise where, for example, the system does not see a new hard disk, although it is working, the operating system is in full working order, the drivers are installed, and so on.

Such a problem most often refers to the wrong BIOS settings (more on this later). The same situation can be observed in the presence of program failures, when the connected device is assigned a letter already used by the system. Finally, the disk may contain errors, and if this is the hard drive from which the OS is started, it is possible that the boot records and sectors that need to be restored are damaged.

Physical causes and ways to eliminate them

To resolve the question of why the system does not see the SATA hard drive (we take this device standard solely as an example), we will begin by considering physical problems.

As is already clear, first check the correctness of the connection and the density of the loops entering the corresponding connectors. In addition, a very common cause of incorrect HDD operation is called overheating of the south bridge, which is more typical for laptops. In this case, first you need to turn off the device and allow it to cool.

For stationary units, a possible solution to the problem may be the option of resetting the settings by removing the CMOS battery from the socket for a couple of minutes (complete reset of the parameters).

Along the way, you should find on the motherboard a special Clear CMOS jumper, which, as a rule, is located near the battery. The jumper first has to switch to the position of 2-3 seconds, then return to the initial connection 1-2.

You should also pay attention to the correctness of the Master / Slave connections (jumper position). A hard drive with an IDE interface must have a Master connection, all other devices, including external hard drives or optical disc drives, are Slave. This, incidentally, applies to situations where the system does not see the second hard drive. But even this is far from all problems.

The system does not see the hard drive: BIOS settings

Another reason that the hard disk is not recognized is in the incorrectly set parameters of the primary BIOS input / output system. If, at boot time, the system reports that the system disk is not found, and asks to insert it, it is possible that another device is installed in the download priority.

In the corresponding section, the priority (first) device for downloading should be selected HDD. If the system does not see the hard disk after that, you should go to the HDD settings section and disable the AHCI mode in the SATA configuration line by setting the RAID parameter or Standard IDE.

Disk Management Partition

But suppose that the main hard drive is recognized and the OS boots without problems. The user connected a second hard drive, but there is no effect. So why does not the system see an external hard drive? There are a lot of reasons for that, one of which is that the disc is not assigned the same letter.

Eliminates this situation simply: go to computer management, where we use a similar partition for disks. Here, absolutely all devices will be displayed, even if they are not recognized at the initial stage of loading or work incorrectly. Select the desired disk, right click call submenu and refer to the line of change of the letter or path to the disk. After that, enter the unused value and save the settings. You may need to reboot.

Problems with drivers

Another misfortune for many users is missing or incorrectly installed drivers responsible for running and installed on the motherboard, and an external hard drive.

If the user has a driver disk that must necessarily be bundled with the purchase, there are no problems. Just install (or reinstall) the drivers. If there is no such disk, you can use the freely distributable Driver Pack Solution directory or install a program like Driver Booster, which will detect the missing, damaged or updated drivers when scanning and automatically integrate them into the system.

Check hard disk and boot record

Finally, the most unpleasant situation is when the operating system from the hard drive is not loaded due to software errors or surface damage.

In the first case, you will need any boot disk (for example, a LiveCD or a system distribution), then you need to call the "R" key to call the Recovery Console and go to the command line, where you first check the disk for errors with the chkdsk command c: / f / r, And then write the lines Bootrec.exe / FixMbr and Bootrec.exe / FixBoot (this will fix the boot records). If this does not work, you need to overwrite the boot sector using the Bootrec.exe / RebuildBcd command. If the problem was really related to this situation, after restarting the boot will go in normal mode without failures.

In case of mechanical damage, the hard drive will have to be replaced. Although it is claimed that it is possible to restore damaged sectors using the HDD Regenerator program by reversing the disk, it is hard to believe.

Conclusion

Finally it remains to say that for cases when the system does not see the hard disk, this is far from being all solutions, since it is simply impossible to envisage all situations. However, all of the above is often found, so depending on the situation, you can apply this or that technique, which will solve the problem.

It deliberately did not consider the problems when the hard disk is not determined by the system due to virus exposure (this also occurs), because protecting your own computer must be a priority for any user. Also, issues related to improper partitioning of the disk or its formatting were not touched upon. Well, when the Winchester, as they say, began to "pour", there is simply no other solution besides replacement.