laptop hardrive, not showing in bios

[chuckman45]

i'm trying to install windows 7 on hp laptop. harddrive is a wd 160 gb.

i boot from dvd and when it gets to the screen to format, there are no

drives. just blank. i went to bios and it shows no hardrive. is there a way to fix this.

i think the person who owns the laptop deleted everything.

[Tripredacus]

Deleting everything wouldn't make the drive disappear from the BIOS. What model notebook is it?

Have you checked the SATA setting? Some notebooks have an option for RAID, and if it is set to that, it can (sometimes) not show up in the BIOS as it normally would. If you are feeling industrious, you could reseat the hard drive.

[chuckman45]

the computer is a compaq presario v6000.

where would i find the sata settings

[Ponch]

i think the person who owns the laptop deleted everything.

You can't delete anything if Bios sees nothing. So either he (or she) physically removed the drive or the drive is dead. Ask for info from that person. When "fixing" a problem, always ask for the original problem. In other words, you need to reinstall because ... ?

[submix8c]

Came with Vista or XP Preinstalled. SATA HDD's...

Google "presario v6000" (with quotes) - The "Maintenance and Service Guide" will show up. Unfortunately, it doesn't say too much except

Enhanced SATA support (select models only)

- Enable/disable enhanced SATA mode.

F2 or F10 should get you into the BIOS (but you did that).

i went to bios and it shows no hardrive

Regardless, the HDD should show in BIOS if it indeed exists and "works".

Service Manual tells all of the "guts" of the PC. How do you know that it's a WD 160gb? Get inside and check? If so, did you ensure that the cables are correctly attached?

Edited January 21, 2012 by submix8c

[chuckman45]

i know what the harddrive is because its marked on the label. vista was installed

[Schiiwa]

I would try to plug it into another machine... so u can definatly see, if the reason is the notebook or hdd! If the problem is the notebook, u could try a bios-update! And like tripredacus said, u could look for raid/ahci/ide-settings, but i don't think that there is the issue! On SATA-drives, there is no jumper for PRI/SEC, but maybe to adjust sata 1.5gb/sec...

Maybe the HDD's never show up in the normal BIOS on this peticular notebook (and just in the RAID-BIOS), and u just need to include the SATA/AHCI-drivers ... which version do u try to install? Is SP1 already integrated?

[Ponch]

i know what the harddrive is because its marked on the label.

Read the answers again. Either it's dead or it's been removed. If you still want to repair, In both cases, you'll have to open the HDD cover anyway.

[jaclaz]

i know what the harddrive is because its marked on the label.

Read the answers again. Either it's dead or it's been removed.

Removed but leaving it's label on thin air? (I read OP as having read the actula HDD label and not the laptop one

If you still want to repair, In both cases, you'll have to open the HDD cover anyway.

Only to avoid possible misunderstandings you DO NOT want to remove the HDD cover, you want to remove the HDD from the laptop (and to do this you will probably need to remove the HDD BAY cover or disassemble the laptop case)

jaclaz

[Ponch]

I read OP as having read the actula HDD label and not the laptop one

Was "wd" the only hint ?

[jaclaz]

Was "wd" the only hint ?

No, actually it was just semantics, the particular way I understood the sentence.

I read this:

i know what the harddrive is because its marked on the label. vista was installed

as:

i know what the harddrive is because [its] the hard drive is marked on the label of the hard drive itself. vista was installed

to me the subject is the hard drive and not the model.

It can be read as well as :

i know what the harddrive make/size is because [its] the make/size is marked on the label of the hard drive itself or of the laptop. vista was installed

(and I have rarely seen a laptop label containing info about the internal hard disk)

jaclaz