Why can't the PC see the hard disk?
Sunday, 01 January, 2006
i turn my machine on, insert my boot diskette and it says
Primary master hard disk fail
i press F1 to continue and my boot diskette kicks in and then i get the message
Cannot detect valid partition
i use FDISK and i get
No fixed disks present
Also, Format is not supported. I'm positive all my settings are correct. i think it has something to do with the BIOS because it doesn't detect my hard drive during "auto detect hard drive".
Michael Tikkanen, Strathfield, NSW
 OK Michael - is this a new drive in an old system?
You need to be careful installing new large drives into older PC's because they typically don't know how to run them correctly. There are two big BIOS/drive issues and they're the 8G limit and the 137G limit.
I won't bother going into why they exist - more important is finding out how to fix them. What you need to do is check out your motherboard on your motherboard manufacturer's website and see if there are any issues with larger drives (as you haven't mentioned the board I can't help with this).
You may need to update the board's BIOS or you may need to purchase an IDE drive card and install the drive on it instead.
OK, that's the first part. The fact the system says "Primary Master Hard Disk Fail" is not good. The fact the BIOS doesn't find it isn't good. If this is a newly installed drive, make sure you've got power connected, make sure the BIOS settings for IDE (or SATA - depending on the drive) controllers are switched on (check the motherboard manual) and then check the cables are correctly installed.
If this is an old drive that used to work, I'd be testing the drive in another PC just to make sure the thing still works. Basically, you won't be doing anything with the drive until you can get it working and that means either connecting it to a secondary controller (if your motherboard has one) or another PC. If it fires up, then your primary IDE controller on the motherboard has carked it.
If it doesn't, I'd say the drive is stuffed.
But also check through HelpStation as there have been hundreds or questions that may relate to your problem. Darren Yates
 Reader solutions
SALEM MAURITANIAPosted: 04/12/2008 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? OK just try to see the HD jumper's
-Master MS
-Slave SV
-Cable Slect CS
move the jumper to one of this positions and make sure you set it up in the BIOS
it'll work I think
thank you ferofaxPosted: 03/08/2008 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? what if my pc detects the cdrom drive anywhere on IDE cables but just refuses to detect my hard drives? there are rare occassions when they work, and i'd be able to get to the desktop, but it crashes, and then it's "primary hard drive failed" all over again.
(Sounds to me like the hard disk is faulty. -PZ) VishnuPosted: 25/05/2008 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? when i added a 40 GB harddisk to my old pentium 1 computer, the computer detects it. Then after some days accidently I low level formatted the drive using my bios and deleted some bad clusters in the drive. Now the computer didn't detect the drive.
Now I am using seagates ontrack diskette to find my hard disk. What do I do to bring it back to normal?
(Use the Seagate utility to format the disk. I imagine you'd want to choose FAT32. -PZ) Donald BokeyarPosted: 05/04/2006 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? Thank you Darren. Changed to secondary controller.Working OK at present. Next question 'How long have I got ?'
Don
(Are you sure you want to know Don? :-) - Paul Zucker) DerekPosted: 11/01/2006 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? I was surfing the net trying to find a solution to the same problem your having. I have an old Dell Dimension XPS Pentium 75 MHz running Windows 95 that was working until a few weeks ago. I don't really use the system that much because it is outdated but hey, it still works! I fired up the pc and tried to logon onto the internet. All of a sudden my computer just completely crashed, and I tried to do a Cntrl-Alt-Delete to reboot it but no response. So I decided to manually shut it off, big mistake!! Upon rebooting the pc, it mentioned that no Operating System was present and I heard clunking noises that sounded like it was coming from the hard drive. I knew right then and there that the hard drive had failed. I placed my Windows 95 Boot Disk in the computer and tried to boot and run FDisk. I received a "No Fixed Disks Present." I went into the BIOS and everything was set for AUTO and it was not listed under Primary Master. I knew the drive was done for (Quantum PRO 540AT), so I purchased a 740AT off of eBay. When I received the drive and hooked it up the same problem occured. I decided to take it over to a friend who an older system, so I could up both drives and see if either one of them would work. The original drive did indeed kick the bucket, but the replacement drive worked and was detected by the BIOS. I believe that I damaged the IDE controller on the mobo when I shut it off. However, I had no choice as the system completely freezed. I was unable to find a BIOS update from Dell as it is such an old system. I tried everything I could think of. It maybe that your controller is fried like mine! I threw it the trash this past week. It was hard parting with it as the system lasted 13 years. Dave SargentPosted: 06/01/2006 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? Hi Micheal, Darren is correct, The first thing you have to do is get your mainboard to see the drive, until your mainboard can see the drive, you aint gonna get anywhere... So go to your boards website ( like MSI or Gigabyte etc ) and download the latest version of the BIOS to suit the bios on the board. REMEMBER, Flashing your bios is something that you need to be very confident about. If you screw up flashing the bios, buy a new mainboard as screwing this up will render the mainboard useless. If you can and have done this, find out how big a hard drive your new biosed mainboard will handle, hopefully the drive giving you problems is below this limit. Next, using another PC, copy the FORMAT program onto your boot disk but make sure that the version of format you are using is the same one for the operating system you intend to use, ( don't use WIN98SE format on a XP machine ). Next, boot the thing up and make sure your bios has detected the drive and can operate it !! Then use Fdisk to create the required partitions and remember, the bigger the drive, the bigger the clusters. I have four 200 gig drives in my PC, each of them is divided into several logical drives of various sizes, giving me assorted areas for storage and reducing the size of the clusters as this saves space on the drive.
Once you have created your partitions and made at least one of them primary and active, Format ALL the drives you have created NOW.
Then, using your boot disk, install your operating system.
If your mainboard will not support the drive you have, even after a bios update, purchase a PCI drive controller card and connect it to this, then start again Fdisking and formatting the drive and install the operating system.
However, YOUR MAINBOARD MUST "SEE" the drive before you can successfully continue to add this drive onto your system.
If the auto detect function does not work, try setting the drives parameters manually, these details are usually printed on the label which is on the top of the drive, along with the jumper settings for master and slaves and cable select...
Have Fun !!!!
Dave Sargent....... lewisPosted: 02/01/2006 re: Why can't the PC see the hard disk? had the same problem... after exausting all other possibilities it turnes out that the IDE cable was faulty! after a quick cable swap it was up and running again. good luck |