Bampah wrote:
I used Partition Magic to try to mirror my C: drive onto another
drive.
The original is a Seagate 250Gb and the new one is a WD 320Gb. Both
are SATA drives.
Everyuthing seemed to be OK but when I rebooted, the new drive could
not be recognised in BIOS and despite altering cables and
configuration in every possible way, the WD still cannot be found.
Is there a way to reset the drive please?
(I'm using XP3)
tia

Turn off the power to the computer.

Take the side off the computer, and verify the data cable and
power cable are connected to the SATA drive.

Turn on the power.

Can you feel any vibration coming from the drive ?

Can you hear it attempting to spin up ?

I would tell you, to download a diagnostic from the
Western Digital web site, but that isn't going to work
unless the WD drive is visible in the BIOS. The fact
the drive is not visible, indicates it could be
defective.

The reason for turning off the power on the computer,
is that is the only certain way to reset the drive.
Using the reset button on the computer is not sufficient
to recover a SATA drive. Powering off works though.

Since you've already done all of this, I'd have to
conclude the drive is defective. I would move the
drive to a second computer and test it there,
before arranging to return the drive under warranty.

Nothing that Partition Magic can do, should affect the
ability to see the disk in the BIOS screens. Even if the
MBR sector was erased, the BIOS display would still work.
It's when the drive fails to start properly, that it
disappears from the BIOS. And that means there is a
serious problem, like the platter is not spinning,
or the head is not loading properly. The drive will not
respond to a BIOS query, until the head is riding on the
platter, at full speed. Quite a bit of initialization
inside the drive is required, before it will answer
a BIOS query.

Paul