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How old is this desktop (you mentioned you got it 2 years ago but I am guessing it was not new then)?
If the CMOS battery went to electronic heaven and you had a power surge meaning complete loss/lack of power to the machine, chances are the BIOS settings would have reset to factory default.
Most OEM desktops made in the last 7 years appear to be using RAID mode for hard drive mode for some weird reason. I said weird because AHCI would be the optimal mode for single drive machines or for machines that have dual drives but were not used in a RAID configuration which is about 99% of them.
If this machine was re-imaged or had a custom installation done by someone or some company, they might have changed the default setting from RAID to AHCI. When BIOS settings go back to default, Windows would no longer boot but even though I am not 100% certain, it would still see the drive.
However, another BIOS setting related to machine boot mode; Legacy (MBR) vs UEFI (GPT) would not only render Windows unbootable but would also make it invisible as a boot drive.
Hard Drive missing is mostly a problem with either the drive itself or its connections.
As others mentioned, you would need to open the side panel and check to see if the drive is spinning (humming) when powered on. Also check to see if both power and data cables were firmly connected at both ends! (do this when the machine is power OFF though).
How old is this desktop (you mentioned you got it 2 years ago but I am guessing it was not new then)?
The mfg date was 2011 so it's pretty old...I got it off of facebook Marketplace in 2020 after the other one died. It was apparently used in an office,it's a Dell Vostro.
The mfg date was 2011 so it's pretty old...I got it off of facebook Marketplace in 2020 after the other one died. It was apparently used in an office,it's a Dell Vostro.
Well, hate to say it but Vostro line is not that "quality" or "high end".
Anyhow, given its age, assuming this is the HDD that it came with, it is the drive. If it is indeed the original drive, it served a longgg time, most don't last more than 6-7 years.
Again, open the side panel and locate the 3.5" HDD where 2 separate cables are going to it, one from the motherboard (SATA cable) and the other is from the PSU (power cable -twice as wide).
When the PC is running, make sure the room is quiet, get close to the drive and see if you hear a clicking sound coming from it. That type of sound is almost always a mechanical failure inside the HDD whether it is a seized/stuck drive head or motor. No software fix for this. It needs to go to a level 100 clean room for data recovery (costly).
No clicking sound but the drive is humming would mean likely a logical or read stability issue. This might be handled with a software or even better hardware/software data recovery solution.
Logical issues can be anything from partition table getting wiped to some other corruption and doesn't necessarily mean drive is bad or going bad.
Read stability, however, is typically caused by drive health and/or bad sectors and would be a major red flag! This would definitely require a hardware/software data recovery solution to minimize the damage to the HDD during data extraction.
No sound, no humming/vibration at all.....more than likely a complete drive failure but there are cases where the integrated board might have fried (happens a lot more with electrical surges/lightning storms/faulty PSU). This doesn't really require a clean room but similarly, a pro/shop needs to work on this as it would require PCB revision and also transferring the 8-pin firmware chip via soldering. It is a bit of work. PCB is the pain part, needs to be from an identical HDD produced in the same month/year of the bad drive.
The last paragraph was probably too much info for average Joe/Jane.
Please check the drive and cables as previously mentioned and then report back.
I'll assume you know that Dell manuals are available on the Dell website for most of their models including ones years old. You can make sure you get the proper ones for your model by knowing the 'service tag' number that is on the ID label on the case or available when you bring up diagnostic mode by hitting F2 when booting. That would give you the 'approved' troubleshooting steps as well as how to properly (and efficiently) open the case and service the machine.
On the Vostros I have had (I have found them to be very reliable machines. My son used one as his main machine when he was in the Army including deployments to Iraq and Kuwait) if you are in a quiet room you should be able to hear the disk spin up during power on if you listen closely.
No need to listen to it, power up the machine and place your hand on it. If it's spinning, you should be able to feel vibrations.
It's either the BIOS lost settings or the drive died or it's the power supply which I doubt. It can't really be anything else.
RAID is used on certain systems to support certain drivers such as Rapid Store. I could get into why but it's technical and beyond the scope of this problem. If it's an older system I doubt it even has RAID in the BIOS.
Nothing wrong with Vostros over any other Dell consumer grade desktop. We have several here at work, they hold up the same as Inspiron or whatever the case may be. The motherboards are virtually the same.
I promise if you just ...put your hand on my computer you won't feel it ...vibrating. And if you're referring to putting your hand on the drive. It's probably mounted in a way that makes that hard to do.
Agree with TL on this one. Pop it open and take a listen.
I promise if you just ...put your hand on my computer you won't feel it ...vibrating. And if you're referring to putting your hand on the drive. It's probably mounted in a way that makes that hard to do.
Agree with TL on this one. Pop it open and take a listen.
I feel it, always have been able to, I promise you too.
And you've been in this biz for how long? You think some civilian is going to be that good at it?
...I see myself touching a lot of PC's today to test this out.
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