Dead Hard Drive

[Dave]

Recently I built a new PC. When I swapped out the old hard drive from
the old build to the new, my hard drive wasn't recognized. I checked
all the settings in the BIOS and made sure cables were all securely
attached. Also, I installed the hard drive on an old PC and it didn't
recognize it either. What could have gone wrong from the time I
disconnected the hard drive from my old computer to reconnecting it to
my new computer (a matter of minutes)?

As someone else wrote, check the jumpers. If you had two drives on the same cable in the old system, then your hard drive is likely jumpered as Master, and that's fine for most hard drives if it is the only hard drive on the cable, or the "master" drive on a cable with two drives. But some hard drives need NO jumper to be alone on an IDE cable.

If it's really not recognized now, it's possible that ESD killed it. If you handle the drive by the "bottom", that is where the delicate (and unprotected) electronics are, usually. -Dave

 

[MP]

Recently I built a new PC. When I swapped out the old hard drive from
the old build to the new, my hard drive wasn't recognized. I checked
all the settings in the BIOS and made sure cables were all securely
attached. Also, I installed the hard drive on an old PC and it didn't
recognize it either. What could have gone wrong from the time I
disconnected the hard drive from my old computer to reconnecting it to
my new computer (a matter of minutes)?

 

[Paul]

Recently I built a new PC. When I swapped out the old hard drive from
the old build to the new, my hard drive wasn't recognized. I checked
all the settings in the BIOS and made sure cables were all securely
attached. Also, I installed the hard drive on an old PC and it didn't
recognize it either. What could have gone wrong from the time I
disconnected the hard drive from my old computer to reconnecting it to
my new computer (a matter of minutes)?

Jumpers set correctly on the hard drive ? (Master/Slave/Cable Select
are options on IDE.)

Power plug properly seated on hard drive ? (Likely a Molex connector on
an old IDE drive).

Data cable seated properly ? If using a single IDE drive on an IDE
cable, it goes on the end connector. And the jumpers would be set
to "Master", "Master Only" (Western Digital), or "Cable Select". For
Cable Select to work, you'd want an IDE cable with 80 wires (the thinner
wire type). Use Master or Master Only, to avoid surprises.

If using two drives on the cable, one is master and the other slave.
Or both cable select etc.

More info here.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf.htm

Paul