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Question

Old computer HDD problems

Mar 26, 2016 8:28AM PDT

Hello,
I recently got a hold of a computer which was custom built and state of the art back in 2005. It has two HDDs, and It hasn't been turned on in years, so I'm trying to get it working again. I booted it up for the first time in years, and it spend a hour and a half on the windows XP welcome screen. Eventually I decided to just start the boot cycle over again, but when booting it up the second time, the BIOS gave me errors about not having any bootable media. After playing around a little with BIOS settings a little (with no luck) I decided to insert a kali linux boot usb. And it booted up perfectly. So I opened up the terminal and typed fdisk -l (which lists all drives connected), and no hard drives came up.

Here is where I've gotten with debugging. The hard drives are being powered up, I can here them. I've tried swapping out SATA cables, but no luck. And I've tried using different SATA ports on the motherboard. But nothing has worked. Any Ideas? Thanks so much!
Note: The computer is pretty dusty, I haven't had a chance to clean it out yet, but I don't think that would contribute to the problem.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Did you reinstall the OS you want to run?
Mar 26, 2016 8:38AM PDT

Since it's a new PC to you, a great time to start fresh.

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Well, I can't
Mar 26, 2016 10:22AM PDT

The problem is that the hard drives aren't being recognized on the motherboard. As I said, I used a Linux boot USB to try and debug the hard drives...

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Then that's a hardware issue.
Mar 26, 2016 11:02AM PDT

You need to treat this like a failed drive, cable or motherboard issue. Since it's not showing in the BIOS, it can be motherboard settings too. That is, on some machines they won't show drives if the BIOS has the IDE or SATA ports disabled. Start with BIOS defaults.

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Answer
Not using linux but just the BIOS,
Mar 26, 2016 10:42AM PDT

did it see any Hdd? If not, then take the Hdd out and try it on another computer to isolate where the problem is. Or a new Hdd on the old computer (Hdd are cheap and you can always use another one).

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Answer
first thing to do
Mar 26, 2016 11:34AM PDT

the first thing to do since the computer if from 2005 is to replace the bios battery. a bad battery could create the exact issues you are currently having.

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and then short the BIOS to reset it.
Mar 27, 2016 3:34AM PDT

Do at the jumper on the motherboard.