is my sata drive dead?

[madcaddies]

Good day

I bought a new pc days ago, its an intel dual core 3.xGHz on G41D3C board. I decided to migrate my old ide drive as precious files were there. Running winXP setup, prompted me to partition the 500Gb sata HD which came with the package. Partition was doing fine until 30 or so percent then it jumped to near finish. Next error message was 'Setup was unable to format the partition. Your hard disk may be damaged.' Upon restart, the sata drive is no longer detected on BIOS level. And im stuck using the old ide drive.

Is the sata drive dead? Is there any way i could get it working again? Thanks in advace.

[Transfusion]

You will have to plug it into another computer to confirm if it works.


If you bend SATA cables at more than 90 degrees, data loss can occur, and has happened to me.


I have fried SATA-based drives(even DVD drives) before by overclocking the PC-apparently I had overclocked it to the point where the PC consumed the entire 350 watts of my power supply, and once the drive spinned up to get ready for the OS boot, the PC stopped dead. The drive(s) were no longer useable. I'm thinking your PC's PSU was pushed to the max because you also had an IDE drive in there. What model PSU do you have? It would help if you listed all the components of your PC. (graphics card, DVD drives, etc.)

[Computer_Commando]

...I bought a new pc days ago, ...Is the sata drive dead? Is there any way i could get it working again?...

Return it for warranty exchange.

[madcaddies]

You will have to plug it into another computer to confirm if it works.


If you bend SATA cables at more than 90 degrees, data loss can occur, and has happened to me.

What model PSU do you have? It would help if you listed all the components of your PC. (graphics card, DVD drives, etc.)

Im not sure about the PSU brand name but its rated at 600W. The graphics card is onboard, the active drives are a hitachi(?) deskstar 40Gb and a cdrom drive both on the same ide bay. I'll try the drive on a friend's machine this weekend. I cant believe sata connection is so fragile.

[madcaddies]

Return it for warranty exchange.

that would be my last choice. If by any chance its found out that i did an erring move (eg user negligence/mishandling) then im dead as well. Warranty agreements in my country are strict.

[Computer_Commando]

... the sata drive is no longer detected on BIOS level....

This is not a good sign.  Check the cable connections.

[Transfusion]

600W is way more than enough, so we can rule out the PSU for now. (although if it is a low-quality brand, power surges may occur and fry things.)


I'll wait until you test the drive at your friends house to make any definite conclusions....