Vanishing internal hard drive.

chunter

i'm looking at a laptop at the moment.
The sata hard drive appears sometimes, other times not.
Tried three sata drives, 2 of them new. Same problem each time.
The drive's not even been registered at the bios stage when it's in it's stealth mode.

Is there such a thing as the SATA drive controller going?

Lucero_2

chunter wrote: »

i'm looking at a laptop at the moment.
The sata hard drive appears sometimes, other times not.
Tried three sata drives, 2 of them new. Same problem each time.
The drive's not even been registered at the bios stage when it's in it's stealth mode.

Is there such a thing as the SATA drive controller going?

Sounds like there is an issue on the controller board (loose connection, poor solder, etc). What model is the laptop?

jetsetterjoe

This is usually a poor soldering issue, but can definitely be fixed. As above - What model?

bluesnake

could also be bad sata cable/connector, could be the drive power cable connection too