Reading time: 7 minutes. Views 101 Published 08/23/2017
Hi all! Today we’ll look at a fairly common problem that almost every second user of personal computers and laptops faces. It lies in the fact that the computer does not see the hard drive. Very often, when turning on the PC, instead of loading the operating system, the user sees a black screen with the words “ Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key" This abusive phrase from the computer means that it does not see our hard drive. Accordingly, the operating system cannot load. Therefore, in today’s article we will try to find out the reason why this problem occurs and we will try to find ways to solve it.
The computer does not see the hard drive. Main reasons.
Since the hard drive is one of the important components of any computer, then, accordingly, if it fails, the user’s further work on it stops, and in order to continue it, it will be necessary to identify the reason why the computer does not see the hard drive and try to fix it. eliminate the cause. Let's look at the most common problems that cause this trouble:
- Hard drive failure;
- The problem is in the cable;
- Incorrect BIOS setting;
- Lack of nutrition;
- Conflicting devices;
- Problems with the operating system;
As you can see, there are not so many reasons, therefore, identifying what your problem is will not be so difficult. The main thing is to follow the tips and recommendations described in this article.
Hard drive failure
From my experience I can say the following: failure of hard drives is a fairly common cause of computer breakdowns. Therefore, if your computer no longer sees the hard drive, then the simplest thing you can do is connect it to another PC. If the disk is seen by another computer, then I can congratulate you, not everything is so bad.
Firstly, the information stored on your disk has not disappeared anywhere, and secondly, most likely the problem can be solved quite easily if you follow the instructions below.
If the other computer refuses to see your hard drive. In this case, things are bad, a physical breakdown has probably occurred and repairs cannot be done, and you may have to buy a new disk.
Motherboard failure.
Very often, the computer does not see the hard drive because the Sata ports on the motherboard fail. To exclude or confirm this problem, first of all we connect the cable to any other port and try to turn on the computer. If the hard drive is detected and the operating system starts to load, then probably one of the Sata slots has failed and the motherboard will need to be repaired, or you can leave everything as it is and continue working on the computer.
The cable is damaged.
To be honest, I haven’t encountered many cases of damaged IDE and SATA cables in my practice, but they have happened. Most often, the connectors themselves were damaged. All this arose due to improper connection of devices by users.
Therefore, first of all, we disconnect the cable from the hard drive and motherboard and inspect it for damage. If you see any defects, we replace the cable with a new one. 
If there is no visible damage, then in order to check the serviceability of the cable connecting the hard drive to the computer’s motherboard, we simply take a similar, known-to-be-good cable and connect our hard drive.
If there was a problem in the lace, then the disk will certainly work, and the problem will be solved by itself.
Note! If your system unit has a DVD drive, then the SATA cable can be taken from it.
Incorrect BIOS setting
After we have examined the mechanical part and found that the hard drive itself is working, we replaced the cable with a new one, and also made sure that the ports are working, but the computer does not see the hard drive, then most likely the problem is software. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is check the BIOS settings. 
If the system has several HDDs installed and only one of them has an operating system, then most likely after a failure, the device boot parameters have changed. To check this, when starting the computer, press the “F2” or “Delete” key and get into the BIOS settings.
Note! Very often, it is quite easy to determine a failure if you pay attention to the date and time that are displayed on the main BIOS page; as a rule, they will not correspond to the actual data.
In the BIOS we are interested in the BOOT section, in which we need to put our hard drive in first place. After this, save the settings by pressing the “F10” key. By the way, for those who don’t know how to correctly set the disk loading order in different versions, read the article: “”. It tells you in detail how to make the settings, but instead of a flash drive you need to select our HDD.
After the computer restarts, the hard drive should be detected and the system will start working.
Lack of nutrition
Since the key is a good power supply, if it does not work properly, there may not be enough power for the components of the system unit or laptop, in particular the hard drive. Because of this, the hard drive may not work correctly: it may randomly disappear and reappear in the system, Windows blue screens of death may appear, and the disk may make a buzzing sound that occurs due to changing operating cycles. 
All this indicates poor HDD power supply. To fix this problem, install a new power supply or have the old one repaired. If it is not possible to replace the power supply, then I recommend disconnecting all unnecessary devices: DVD drive, extra HDDs and other volatile devices.
Conflicting devices.
A fairly rare phenomenon, but still occurring from time to time, is a conflict between two identical hard drives. To solve this problem, connect each drive one by one and wait for them to install on the system.
Operating system problems.
The last option in which the computer does not see the hard drive is problems with the Windows operating system. If the connected disk is not automatically detected in the system, it is possible that the disk is new and not yet formatted, the disk letter is not assigned, or the disk is not active.
To check this, do the following:
Note! If you bought a new hard drive and connected it to your computer, then most likely the disk is not partitioned. To do this, first of all, in the “Disk Management” window, select the desired disk, right-click on it and select “Create partition”, only after that we format it and set the drive letter.
If the disk is not new, before using it, make sure that there is nothing valuable on it, since after formatting you will lose all data.
Let's summarize.
Today we looked at the main reasons why the computer does not see the hard drive. As you can see, diagnosing the problem and understanding why exactly the disk is not working is quite simple. Very often everything is limited to moving the cable to neighboring ports or correctly configuring the system.
Every computer uses a hard drive that stores software and other files needed to function. Note that this component is very sensitive, and problems with it often arise. This is explained by the presence of elements moving at high speed inside the disk. One possible problem is when the computer does not see the hard drive. Why does this happen and how to solve it? Let's talk about this.
Problem with connection interface or power supply
First you need to check whether the disk is working. To do this, you need to connect it to another computer. This is not difficult to do: just remove 4 (or even 2) screws, pull out the power cable and SATA cable and connect it to another computer. If he sees the disk, this will clearly indicate a problem with the computer from which the drive was removed.
Why doesn't the computer see the hard drive if another system was able to notice it? There may be several reasons:
There is a small chance that after these manipulations the hard drive will work. These are the most basic operations that a user can quickly take to solve this problem. If nothing helps and it is still unknown why the computer does not see the hard drive, then you need to look deeper for the reason.
BIOS Settings
BIOS may well be the reason why the computer does not see the hard drive. Therefore, its settings must either be changed or reset. The last option is the simplest. To do this, restart the computer, enter the BIOS (usually you need to press F2 or Del when rebooting) and look for the “Load Optimized Defaults” menu item. It can also be the line "Load Optimal Defaults". We select this item, press Enter, the system asks us for confirmation, we agree. Now press F10 (save and exit), confirm the action, the computer reboots again. The system will then be able to see the hard drive, after which it will boot.
No interface support
If the computer does not see the hard drive, the reason may be the SATA interface, which older operating systems cannot work with. However, there is an opinion that this problem can be solved by downloading drivers for SATA or installing a Windows distribution kit in which the necessary drivers are preinstalled. However, the easiest option is to install a more recent operating system (Windows 7, for example), where the necessary drivers are available by default.
By the way, the lack of drivers in the system is possible if pirated copies of software are used in the form of various assemblies from unknown users.
Device conflict
If several hard drives from different manufacturers are connected to the computer via different SATA interfaces, then a device conflict may occur. It is quite easy to check whether this is actually the case. To do this, you need to disconnect each drive in turn and see how the system reacts to this. It may turn out that after disconnecting the first disk, the operating system will freely detect the second drive, and when disconnecting the second, it will see the first without any problems. In this case, the reason why the computer does not see the new hard drive will be obvious - a device conflict. If the disk is new, then it is advisable to replace it with another one - from the same manufacturer as the main one.
Operating system problems
In some cases, it is not clear why the computer does not see the hard drive; Windows boots at the same time, and information about it is displayed in the BIOS. In this case, there is a problem with the operating system. You can try to solve this problem using Windows itself.
To do this, open the “Control Panel” and go to the “Administration” section. There is a "Computer Management" item. Select it and see “Disk Management” in the tree on the left. Right-click on it, a context menu will appear, click on “Change drive letter or path”. A new window opens in which we can change the drive letter. Specify a new letter, click "OK", and restart the computer.
In some cases this helps solve the problem, but not always. This solution works when the system already has another device (for example, a DVD drive) that is assigned the letter D, which is used to designate the default primary disk partition.
When the disk is not enabled by the system
If you connect an additional hard drive, the system may crash and not prepare it. However, this can also be done manually. To do this, go to the same “Disk Management” section. All disks connected to the computer will be displayed there - working or not. If there is a line “No data” next to the additional disk, this means that it has not been initialized. Right-click on it and select “Initialize”.
Also next to the disk it may be written “Not allocated”. Right-click on it, select the “Create simple volume” option and follow the system instructions.
If the RAW disk system is specified, this means that the drive must be formatted with the NTFS or FAT32 file system. Right-click on it and select the “Format” option. In this case, all information from the drive will be deleted.
If the computer does not see the external hard drive
Note that an external drive is a more modern analogue of a flash drive. It connects via USB interface. Therefore, if the computer does not see the external hard drive, then first of all you need to try to connect it to another USB port.
If this does not help, then you need to change the drive letter. The above describes how to do this. It is also worth considering that the new disk may not be formatted. You will have to do this yourself. You need to format it in FAT32 or NTFS in the same “Disk Management” section. Be careful, as formatting permanently deletes all data from the disk.
Lack of drivers is another reason why the computer does not see the hard drive. What to do in this case? Yes, you just need to install the drivers. Perhaps the external hard drive came with a disk with utilities - they need to be installed. If there is no disk, then the necessary “firewood” can be found on the Internet, downloaded and installed. And although in 90% of cases Windows automatically connects external hard drives (the drivers are already in the system), sometimes it happens that applications need to be downloaded yourself.
Finally
These are the main reasons why the computer does not see the hard drive. You now know what to do in these cases, but if nothing works and the system still cannot recognize the presence of the drive, then a hardware failure of the device cannot be ruled out. It can be determined absolutely accurately by connecting the drive to another computer. And even if another system could not recognize it, then it is clearly broken. However, if it is new, it will definitely be replaced under warranty. As for old disks that are more than 5 years old, there is no need to worry about them, since they do not last very long. Drives are extremely sensitive devices and have moving parts inside them. And if we are talking about SSD drives, then these have a limited service life, since memory cells disappear when recording and erasing information.
In general, now you understand why the computer does not see the hard drive and how to fix this problem. Note that this is a common phenomenon, which in most cases can be solved using software.
At the moment, the hard drive is the most popular device for storing information. However, problems arise from time to time. One of the most well-known problems is that the computer does not see the hard drive. For one reason or another, it is not detected by the system, BIOS, or device. Let's figure out why the computer doesn't read the hard drive and try to correct the situation.
Windows operating system does not see the hard drive
Symptom: The Windows operating system (XP, 7-10) does not see the hard drive, it is not displayed in Explorer. At the same time, the hard drive is successfully detected in the BIOS and on other computers.
Diagnosis: The system may not see the hard drive because the drive letter is not assigned or the file system format is not defined.
What to do:
Right mouse button on Start - Disk Management (You can go here via Win + R - diskmgmt.msc - Enter). In the context menu of the desired drive, select the command “Change drive letter or drive path.”
To format, select the Format command. Specify the volume label, file system format and click OK.
The computer (laptop) does not see the external hard drive
Symptom: The computer does not see the external hard drive when connected via USB or SATA.
Diagnosis: The USB ports may be faulty or the file system of the external HDD is incompatible with the operating system. There is no power coming from the USB cable.
What to do:
Check whether other devices, such as flash drives, are connected through this USB port. There is a possibility that the USB ports located on the front panel of the computer are simply not connected to the motherboard. Also, on laptops one of the ports may not work due to motherboard bridge errors.
Through the Disk Management panel, check whether the disk is accessible and whether it is recognized as a partitioned file space. You may need to format your hard drive to FAT/NTFS to run on Windows. If the external hard drive is still not detected, assign a different drive letter in the same section of the control panel.
Not all USB cables are suitable for connecting a hard drive to a computer. Some of them do not have enough power to operate the remote drive. It is best to use the cable that comes with your external hard drive. Additionally, you may need to share two USB ports for connection. Therefore, if your external hard drive is not working, carefully review the documentation that came with the problematic storage device.
Bios doesn't see hard drive
Symptom: The HDD is not detected by the system (is absent as a device), and the bios does not see the hard drive. The external indicator is on. The hard drive makes clicking noises or tries unsuccessfully to “start” (the sound of the heads spinning is heard).
Diagnosis: one of the most common errors related to HDD operation. The disk has probably failed or is not connected correctly to the computer's motherboard.
What to do:
Open the system unit (after disconnecting it from the network!). Check that the power and SATA/IDE cables are securely connected to the hard drive. It's better to play it safe and disconnect/attach the cables again. Also check if these cables are damaged and if they are tightly connected to the motherboard socket (in the case of SATA/IDE). Try connecting alternative cables if available.
If the hard drive clicks and is not detected, it is likely an electronic failure or a mechanical failure of the hard drive. Only repair or warranty replacement of the hard drive will help. If there is no visible damage to the HDD or SSD and the warranty has not expired, feel free to contact the place where you sell the hard drive to replace it. Unfortunately, you will lose all data on the disk.
Question answer
I decided to replace my case with a new one. I bought the board, connected everything as it should, started it up, everything was fine for two days, but after a couple of days I turned on the PC - the computer did not see the hard drive. What I see: it turns out to me that the disk with the OS is not detected and the system offers to restart the system. I restart and everything is new. I went into the BIOS, there the sata port on which the disk with the OS is connected is not connected. I changed ports (several times), changed sata cables, it didn’t help, I used a spare one, zero results - the BIOS does not see the hard drive. I had to install the OS on another disk.
I tried to update the sata drivers, updated the BIOS (I can’t reset it, there are no jumpers or battery). Disk Management also does not see this disk. I do not know what to do. The sata ports are working properly, the cables are also working. There is power to the HDD, it spins without unnecessary noise or crackling, but the hard drive is still not displayed.
Answer. Find out the specifications of your motherboard and hard drive. Does the board support this sata standard? There may be discrepancies between different Sata versions. As a result, the hard drive does not open.
Check if the hard drive is detected on the previous motherboard or another PC. If the issue is not resolved, replace the hard drive under warranty.
My hard drive (external) cannot be opened, Windows writes: “The disk structure is damaged. Reading is impossible.” I clicked on “Deep Scan Recovery”, but the problem disk is not there, it is present on my computer and I wrote what it says. Tell me what to do if the system does not see the external hard drive.
Answer. The computer does not see the external hard drive due to reading errors. You can fix them using the standard chkdsk utility (Properties - Tools - Checking the disk for file system errors). Go to Disk Management and check if Windows has detected the file system. If necessary, assign a different letter to the file volume or, as a last resort, format the HDD.
I have a 2TB HDD, I used to work with an IMac. And now I connect it to a Windows laptop and this laptop does not see the hard drive. What can be done to save the information on the hard drive and make it so that the laptop can see it?
Answer. You can make a disk image using Acronis True Image and then perform recovery operations on the image. Since a hard drive that previously worked in MacOS is not detected, it makes sense to check whether this drive opens in this operating system (you need to test Mac OS devices with the ability to connect an HDD).
To read the HFS file system (standard for Mac OS) under Windows, use, for example, the HFS+ for Windows® 11 program from Paragon.
The WD10EALX hard drive was no longer detected by the BIOS after the motherboard burned out. But when connected, you can hear the engine starting to spin. It is necessary to reanimate the disk, preferably so that it becomes detectable (it is advisable not to erase the remaining data). Why doesn't bios recognize the hard drive, how to fix it and how much will the repair cost?
Answer. Mechanical failure of the hard drive is unlikely to be corrected. Firstly, this can only be done in special laboratories, and secondly, repairs will cost several hundred dollars. Unfortunately, you will not be able to recover data from your hard drive.
Not long ago I borrowed an extra 500GB HDD (WD Blue 500GB) from a friend. When connecting to my computer, I encountered the following problem: the hard drive is visible in the BIOS, but the BIOS defines it as 0MB. When I try to install the OS on a hard drive, the installer does not see it. If you run the OS from another hard drive and leave this one connected, it will not be visible even on the disk layout. What should I do if I don’t see the hard drive in the BIOS with the correct size?
Answer. To figure out why the computer does not see the hard drive, you must first check whether it is detected on a different configuration. If your friend’s HDD opens and the bios shows the correct information, the issue is specifically in the configuration of your computer. Check the technical specifications of your computer's motherboard to see if the connection protocol used by the hard drive supports it.
If you connect a hard drive as a second storage device, conflicts may also occur. We recommend disabling the AHCI mode for SATA in the BIOS (see the SATA MODE parameter).
The hard drive is slow, that is, Windows does not boot from it, but the BIOS sees it. When I try to transfer it to another PC as an additional one, the same situation occurs (the computer hangs on the Windows logo). I tried to format it from a bootable flash drive in Party Magic, but it starts to see the hard drive only after a minute. 20, but I’m generally silent about doing anything with it. Essentially, the hard drive does not work normally. Please tell me what could be the reason for such a glitch, how can I check?
Answer. We would recommend using one of the utilities to check your hard drive for possible “jambs” and reading errors: TestDisk or HDD Health (see above). It is likely that the operating system does not see the hard drive due to the presence of bad sectors. Also, as mentioned above, you can connect the HDD to another computer and check the hard drive for errors using standard Windows tools or the TestDisk application.
Good afternoon.
External hard drives (HDDs) are becoming more popular day by day, sometimes it seems that very soon they will be more popular than flash drives. And it’s not surprising, because modern models are some kind of box, the size of a cell phone and contain 1-2 TB of information!
Many users are faced with the fact that the computer does not see the external hard drive. Most often, this happens immediately after purchasing a new device. Let's try to figure out in order what's going on here...
If the new external HDD is not visible
Here, new means the disk that you connected to your computer (laptop) for the first time.
1) First what are you doing - go to computer control .
To do this, go to control Panel , then in system and security settings -> administration -> computer control . See screenshots below.
2) Please note to the column on the left. It has a menu - disk management . Let's move on.
All drives (including external ones) connected to the system should be displayed in front of you. Very often, the computer does not see the connected external hard drive due to the incorrect drive letter assignment. You need to change it!
To do this, right-click on the external drive and select “ change drive letter... ". Next, assign the one that is not yet in your OS.
3) If the disk is new, and you connected it to your computer for the first time - it may not be formatted! Therefore, it will not appear in “my computer”.
If this is the case, then you will not be able to change the letter (you simply will not have such a menu). You just need to right click on the external drive and select " create a simple volume... «.
Attention! During this process, all data on the disk (HDD) will be deleted! Be careful.
4) Lack of drivers... (Update from 04/05/2015)
If the external hard drive is new and you don’t see it in either “My Computer” or “ disk management“, and it works on other devices (for example, a TV or another laptop sees and detects it) - then 99% of the problems are related to the Windows OS and drivers.
Despite the fact that modern Windows 7, 8 operating systems are quite “smart” and when a new device is detected, they automatically search for a driver for it - this does not always happen... The fact is that the Windows 7, 8 OS versions (including all kinds of assemblies from " there are a huge number of craftsmen), and various mistakes have not been canceled. Therefore, I don’t recommend excluding this option right away...
1. Check the USB port to see if it is working. For example, connect a phone or camera, even just a regular flash drive. If the device works, then the USB port has nothing to do with it...
2. Go to Device Manager (In Windows 7/8: Control Panel/System and Security/Device Manager) and look at two tabs: Other devices And disk devices.
Windows 7: Device Manager reports that there are no drivers for the “My Passport ULTRA WD” disk in the system.
The screenshot above shows that Windows does not have drivers for an external hard drive, so the computer does not see it. Usually, Windows 7, 8, when you connect a new device, automatically installs a driver for it. If this does not happen for you, you have three options:
a) Click the “Update hardware configuration” command in the device manager. Usually this is followed by automatic installation of drivers.
b) Search for drivers using special. programs: ;
c) Reinstall Windows (to install, select a “clean” licensed system, without any assemblies).
Windows 7 - Device Manager: drivers for the external HDD Samsung M3 Portable are installed correctly.
If you can't see your old external hard drive
Old here refers to a hard drive that previously worked on your computer and then stopped working.
1. First, go to the disk management menu (see above) and change the drive letter. This is definitely worth doing if you have created new partitions on your hard drive.
2. Secondly, check the external HDD for viruses. Many viruses disable the ability to see disks or block them ().
3. Go to Device Manager and see if the devices are detected correctly. There should be no yellow exclamation marks (or red ones) that indicate errors. It is also recommended to reinstall the drivers for the USB controller.
4. Sometimes reinstalling Windows OS helps. Anyway, first, check the functionality of the hard drive on another computer/laptop/netbook, and then try reinstalling.
It’s also useful to try cleaning your computer from unnecessary junk files and optimizing the registry and programs (here’s an article with all the utilities: use a couple...).
5. Try connecting the external HDD to a different USB port. It happened that for unknown reasons, after connecting to another port, the disk worked perfectly as if nothing had happened. I noticed this several times on Acer laptops.
6. Check the cords.
One time the external hard drive didn't work because the cord was damaged. I didn’t notice it from the very beginning and spent 5-10 minutes looking for the cause...
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