Nooo! Advice needed.

[weemadando]

So, I've lost my primary HDD. Its not being detected even at the BIOS level.

What possible data recovery tools are there? I can use a SATA/USB caddy to hook it up to a laptop to help with this, but most of my tools etc are still in storage in another city.

I'm hoping its just a FAT collapse or similar, but the total lack of a device being found in BIOS makes me more than a little concerned.

Ideas, suggestions, commiserations from anyone?

[Netko]

Try the manufacturers diagnostic tools to see if they can glean a bit more info about the state of the drive (I doubt they will be able to if it isn't being detected in BIOS, but it doesn't hurt). Also, try moving it to another computer/connection (preferably somewhere where it can be directly connected but your enclosure will do in a pinch) just to make sure that it really is fried and not some problem with the MB.

Its most likely a case of the electronics being fried though, which, in all likelyhood means you're out of luck - theoretically you could acquire an exact same model (must be exactly the same, down to revisions) and replace the electronics, however that isn't exactly a very practical option in most cases.

[Isil`Zha]

First off, what OS are you running? My sister had a similar issue on her computer and it turned out that the boot sector of the drive got corrupted - and just like you the BIOS couldn't even see it because of that corrupted sector. If you have a newer version of Windows, and have the disk, boot it to the recovery console and run chkdsk, and there's also an option to repair a) the boot sector, and b) the MBR. If that still fails you still have two more options:

Have it repair the Windows install, or
reinstall Windows completely - this will wipe out user accounts and such, but you could possibly recover everything on the root drive if it was just a problem with the boot sector/MBR.

If even all that fails due to a bad disk there's but one decent option left:

Spinrite.

Keep in mind that depending on the damage and size of the drive, it could literally take months for it to finish its recovery process (it meticulously goes through every... single... bit of the drive.) Even then, there are no guarantees that it can recover all, or any, lost data - it will however mark bad sectors and you may be able to get other stuff off it or use it again.

[Sarevok]

When this happened to me the repair people said the HDD motor was damaged. The data if intact could be recovered but only in a specialist facility where they remove the protective case. Since I had no data worth that much trouble I did not bother. I hope your case is not so severe but it is there is not much software can do.