Member Avatar for rkulp

I was formatting a brand new hard drive the other day and my computer froze up so I just shut it off. Now the new hard drive is not being detected in BIOS or in Windows. When I go into the BIOS setting and try to auto detect the hard drive, it window pops up that says "Auto Detecting Hard Drives..." I let the computer do its thing for about 10 hours and the window never went away and the hard drive was not detected. What should I do to fix this?

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Brief summary and immediate context: reported that a newly added drive vanished from the system after an interrupted format; the original drive still appears in BIOS while the new device does not, and BIOS "auto-detect" hangs. ’s suggestion to check BIOS is valid, but a short physical-and-isolation workflow will narrow the cause far faster than repeated BIOS scans.

Recommended diagnostic sequence (in order):

  • Power down, unplug, open the case. Verify the suspect drive has a firm power connector (Molex or SATA power) and a firmly seated data cable. Check for drive spin or LED activity when powered.
  • Swap cables and ports: move the suspect drive onto the same cable/port the known-good drive uses (or swap the two drives). A change in behavior isolates cable/port versus drive failure.
  • For PATA/IDE drives, confirm jumper positions against the drive label (master/slave/cable-select); do not guess jumper orientation.
  • Clear CMOS (remove the motherboard battery for 30s or use the jumper) to eliminate a BIOS state problem, then re-check device detection.
  • Test the drive external to the PC (another machine or a USB-to-SATA/PATA adapter). If the drive appears there, the original motherboard/IDE channel or PSU is the likely culprit.

Useful quick checks (Linux live USB recommended):

sudo dmesg | tail -n 50
sudo lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL
sudo fdisk -l

Next steps and cautions: If the drive is ever detected but shows unallocated space, avoid initializing or formatting it when data recovery is desired; use recovery tools (TestDisk, manufacturer utilities) or professional services. If the drive is never detected on any host after swapping cables and ports, manufacturer diagnostics and RMA are the realistic options. This expands on ’s BIOS check by prioritizing physical checks and cross-testing to pinpoint whether the fault is cable, controller, power, or the drive itself.

Member Avatar for rosscberg

Check with the bios settings, whether your hard disk displayed in the bios setting or not?

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Member Avatar for rkulp

When I boot the computer it looks like this.

IDE Channel Master 0: WDC WD160.....
IDE Channel Master 1:

Channel 1 used to have a name just like channel 0 but after the computer crashed it is blank. When I enter the BIOS settings and go to Channel 1 it shows that it is 0gb and I try to use the Auto Detect Hard Drive and it will try to detect it for over 12hours untill I shut it down.

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