Is this a hard drive failure?

[LordJezo]

So last night I update the BIOS on a motherboard because it has been acting strange.. can't play movie files, has problems decteting the IDE devices when it boots (sometimes you need to power cycle 4 times before it will detect the hard drive)

Anywho, I flash the BIOS to the newst version and when I go to reset I cannot get it to dectect the primary hard drive. If I try to get the BIOS to detect it it freezes. If I disconnect the harddrive it finds all of the other devices fine. If I connect the other devices to the primary IDE connection and the "bad" harddrive to a different connection, it finds the other devices but once again not the hard drive.

I tried taking the harddrive out and putting it in a different computer.. no luck there either. Refuses to be decteded.

The hard drive is only a year old.. dont know what kind it is since the person has it in some kind of hard drive case andd she has lost the key.

Is it bad?

 

[compudog]

The drive is bad. You should be able to jimmy the lock on the case, they are not very secure. The drive may still have warranty left on it, so you may be able to RMA it.

 

[owensdj]

Like compudog said, it's probably bad but you might want to check the master/slave jumper settings on the drive to make sure they're correct. If it's the only device on the IDE channel(only device on the ribbon cable), make sure you have it set for Single Drive. Lookup the settings on the drive manufacturer's web site if you need it to make sure you have that correct.