So here's a weird issue: When you first turn on this desktop computer, it does not recognize that it has a hard drive in it. However, if you then press the reset button, or turn it off and back on quickly enough, the hard drive will be recognized. In all other aspects, the drive works perfectly, with a S.M.A.R.T test showing no errors. What could be the cause of this, and is there any way to fix it?
Hard disk only recognized if it has already spun up
bioshard drive
Related Solutions
All of my PCs, some of which are on 24/7, some only on while I'm using them, are set to power down the hard disks after 20 minutes. The accepted answer on the question you linked to says that there is no data showing this is damaging (plus, if there was, why would Microsoft make that a setting?)
Is this drive your primary or a secondary drive? I'm no professional, but it sounds to me like it's going downhill rather fast.
I had success once recovering information by placing the HDD into a USB enclosure, placing the enclosure into a gallon-size ziploc bag, and placing the bag into the freezer (the bag is to help keep condensation from forming). I pulled data off the drive while it was in the freezer, and got a very strange look from the wife as she walked by and saw the usb cord running out of the freezer. My understanding of the process is that the deep cold of the freezer causes a slight contraction of the HDD parts, bringing them back into alignment. Like I said - it worked for me, but no guarantees. My HDD was making a ticking sound and would keep having problems reading files.
Either way, the sooner you get that data, the better.
I'm adding a new hard drive, a Seagate ST31000340NS. Interestingly, the bios recognizes it as a ST31000340AS, but it was bought as the other number...
If it were me, I would take the sucker out and check the label to make sure it matches what you bought. And if after you get past your current problems if the drive model is still reported as AS rather than NS I would check with Seagate about it.
The ST31000340NS looks to be the enterprise version of the drive and I assume you paid a premium for it. Seagate may indeed sell exactly the same hardware and only change the labels and the warranty periods ... but you should at least get the label you (I assume) paid extra for. No?
Finally figured out that the hard drive needed a jumper set to limit the speed to 1.5gbps so the mobo would recognize it, and the bios DOES recognize it now.
This is supposed to be auto-negotiated ... oh, well. Suppose it doesn't make any difference since the board apparently doesn't support anything better than first generation SATA speeds.
But not windows (using windows 7), using add new hardware or
diskmgmt.msc.
"Add new hardware" is not where I would be looking. I would look in the device manager (run the command devmgmt.msc in a command prompt). I expect you will find the drive listed there. My guess is that it is probably also showing up in diskmgmt.msc and just needs to be (1) initialized (assigned a MS serial number?) and (2) formatted. But WTHDIRK?
Ubuntu livecd recognized the drive
Which is why I expect Windows 7 will also recognize it. I seriously do not see how this could be a driver issue. Any drivers for the chipsets on this motherboard would already be included in Windows 7.
You might have a problem with Windows XP if you used too early a version. Heck, the early versions of Windows XP did not even support a hard drive capacity larger than 128GB. XP was around a long time and went through some changes. But so long as you were using at least XP SP2 you should have been OK there as well.
The only other info I can think of that might be immediately relevant is that the drive is plugged into the fifth sata channel, and the first channel is empty. Is this a problem?
You lost me here. Below is an image of the motherboard from the link in your question. There are only four SATA ports on this board. Why are you talking about the "fifth sata channel"? There are only four SATA ports unless the motherboard reference you gave is wrong.
Are you using the latest BIOS? If not I would get it from HP and upgrade. (It was dated Dec of 2007 IIRC).
Best Answer
It could be that the BIOS is not waiting long enough for the hard drive to spin up before continuing to boot. Many BIOSes have an option for "hard drive spin up time" which can delay the boot process for a couple of seconds while the hard drive spins up.
If you can get into the BIOS then I would look for that option and see of you can extend the delay.
If this is a recent occurrence then it could be a sign that the hard drive motor is beginning to fail and can no longer spin up as quickly as it used to. This would be a bad indication as it may not be able to spin up at all soon.