Hard Drive Not Detected

MHOX

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Oct 22, 2010
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The problem is my laptop ( Sager NP2090 ) wont detect its hard drive when booting.

Here is a little backstory. It stopped displaying anything ( blank screen ) when I booted it up so I looked into it and it turns out the graphics card it has ( Nvidia 8600 ) apparently is known for being faulty and I concluded the card had died. Since the laptop is pretty old I decided to take it apart an see if I could fix it. I removed the graphics card and decided I would try the " put it the oven method" to try and revive it. I know that sounds crazy but once again the laptop is old and I really didnt care if it didnt work, but luckily it was successful. I reinstalled the card and put everything back together and when I powered it on I finally got it to display the boot up process up until it was supposed to start the operating system.

This is were my issue is happening, every time it tries to boot, it stops and displays a PXE-61: Media Test Failure, Check Cable error. It then continues this error on a loop until I shut it down. I removed the hard drive and installed it into my desktop and it works fine, I also tried another hard drive in the laptop but it displays the same error. So I am sure it is not the hard drive. The hard drive worked fine before I took apart the laptop, it spun up and showed the blinking light, now when I boot it up the hard drive stays silent and there is no light. I booted with a linux live cd and couldnt access the hard drive that way either, it wasnt even detected.

I think it has to be a motherboard problem because the hard drive works fine outside of the laptop. When I boot with the drive installed and go into the bios it shows no drive detected. I already know that the PXE 61 error means it is trying to boot from a network, but it is only doing that because it cant detect the hard drive.

Does anyone have any advice?
 

benji720

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May 24, 2012
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I had one of these and the exact same thing happened. I am pretty sure the controller on my motherboard went out and a quick google search confirmed that these do indeed have issues with losing hard drive connectivity and there isn't much that can be done, as far as I could tell.
 

MHOX

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Oct 22, 2010
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It just seems weird that as soon as I took it apart the motherboard no longer detects the hard drive anymore. I was very careful when I was working on it and I had an assembly guide to follow so I am fairly confident that it was reassembled correctly.

Its kind of disappointing that I fixed the GPU but now it wont boot anymore.
 
check to see that there no bent pins where you plug the laptop in. most times if there more then one board..and the hard drive is connected to the second board you could have missed a row of pins. if the laptop real cheap and it did use a data cable..the clip might not have been closed and the cable fell out.
 

MHOX

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The laptop uses sata so there are no pins. The hard drive plugs directly into the motherboard. It is not a cheap laptop, when I bought a few years ago I paid around $1200 for it.

I am just confused as to why it could detect the hard drive, but after taking it apart it no longer can. There are no cables going to the hard drive, there is a L shaped plug connected directly to the motherboard and the hard drive just slides into it.
 

mouse24

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Nov 30, 2010
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Make sure the sata cable (L shaped plug) is making contact with the L shaped connector on the HDD, aswell as the bigger L shaped connector (ones sata data cable ones sata power)

Its most likely an issue with it not being a firm connection, etc.
 

MHOX

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Oct 22, 2010
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How do I do this? There are no cables just a large grey plug connected to the the mobo , you put the hard drive flat into the bay and slide it back into the plug