Hard Drive Troubleshooting. Ths ATA drive troubleshooting chapter for hard drives is from my book, Computer. Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts, Third Edition. The main update to the. If your product is not listed above, please visit the product page. JPG' alt='Toshiba Hard Drive Diagnostic Tool' title='Toshiba Hard Drive Diagnostic Tool' />FAQ TOSHIBA Laptop Utilities and Features How to enabledisable and use these applications and features. Intel Celeron Processor 900 39. Toshiba TruBrite HD TFT High Brightness display with 16 9 aspect ratio and LED backlighting. SATA Drive and ATA Hard Drive Diagnostic Flowchart Warning You must unplug your ATX power supply from the wall before working inside the case. Third Edition is the addition of SSD. SATA 3, with similar updates to the hard drive performance chapter. The. book with 1. Note that these steps correspond with decision points on the flowchart and. The text below cannot. ATA drives properly identified. BIOS and displayed on the start up screen Any modern PC should be. Some brand name PCs may not display a start up BIOS. CMOS Setup to view the information. If the key stroke required to enter CMOS Setup isnt displayed on the screen. PC begins to boot, youll need to look it up in the documentation. Internet. Common keys used to access CMOS Setup at boot are. DEL, lt F1 and lt F2. Return to Diagnostic Chart it a solid state drive SSDWhile SSDs with. ATA interfaces should look like their mechanical counterparts to the BIOS. Namely, they dont have motors, readwrite heads on a moving arm, or spinning. So they dont make any noise and they dont resist twisting like a. In case of a failed SSD firmware update, power down your PC. Sierra Games Leisure Suit Larry more. BIOS. Return to Diagnostic Chart the SSD drive equipped with a SATA or PATA. IDE interface In terms of cabling issues for power and data, and jumpers. SSD drives when they are interfaced as PATA. SATA drives is the same as for the magnetic drives. But one of the main. SSD drive is simply not showing up in the BIOS. The. very next time you power down and power up again, the drive might reappear. I would take that as an opportunity to back up any important data and. Some SSD drives are sold with a PCIe PCI Express interface, but configuring. If youre just looking. SATA 3 SSD may make more sense. SSD drives also come. USB and SCSI interfaces, plus a couple more exotic interfaces only used. For the main part, you troubleshoot SSD devices the same way. So for USB SSD, see the general. USB troubleshooting guidelines in the Peripherals flowchart and for SCSI. SSD see the SCSI flowchart. For PCIe SSD, after reseating the PCIe card. Make sure the motherboard. PCIe version supports the SSD card, and that the PCIe slot has the full number. Update the drivers from the manufacturer and check if. Return to Diagnostic Chart the hard drive spin up We covered this in. Ill repeat it here for convenience. When. the PC powers up, you should hear the hard drive motor spinning up the drive. If I cant. tell whether or not the drive is spinning up, even with my fingers on the. I run the drive in my hand. A spun up drive resists a. Dont flip it quickly or play. Just power down, put the drive back. One of the reasons you should always use four screws in older PATA drives. Ive never broken a power. Ive seen it done, so dont. Try the hard drive in another PC or a USB shell before. Return to Diagnostic Chart later PATA drives supported Cable Select. CS which means the pin 2. Master and which is Slave. New motherboards and drives ship with. Motherboard IDE Connector Blue, Slave IDE connector. Cyberpower Usb Serial Driver there. Grey, Master Black. Cable Select is also. The jumpers on both drives should be set to cable select. CS if you arent setting one as Master and the other as Slave. Return to Diagnostic Chart diagnostic tree splits here between the newer. SATA Serial ATA interface drives and the older PATA Parallel ATA interface. PATA drives are often referred to as plain ATA or IDE, the terms. SATA and PATA drives feature different connectors. On the SATA drives, the power cable is wider than the data. PATA or IDE drives, the data cable is a wide ribbon cable. Molex 4 wire connector also used. SATA 1 drives. Return to Diagnostic Chart initial interface speed for SATA drives was. MBs, also known as SATA 1. The next generation SATA 2 interface supports. MBs and the current SATA 3 peaks around 6. MBs. Since the S in SATA. Gbitss. for SATA 1, 3. Gbitss for SATA 2, and 6. Gbitss for SATA 3, but hard. MBs. that I use here. If you are replacing an older SATA drive with one from a. BIOS or wont boot reliably. SATA 1 controller designed for. MBs peak transfer rate, or a SATA 2 controller designed for a 3. MBs peak transfer rate. Return to Diagnostic Chart SATA interface is pretty bullet proof in. IDE technology, you almost have to work at getting. If the drive powers up but isnt recognized. BIOS, its possible that the data cable is bad, or not properly seated. If the data cable is known to be. SATA port on the motherboard. Some motherboards offer a completely separate. SATA connectors for RAID arrays see hard drive performance. If the. motherboard BIOS supports AHCI Advanced Host Controller Interface you should. SATA drive will end up emulating an IDE drive if. If Windows is already installed, see the Just switched to AHCI. Hard Drive Performance and Boot chart. Return to Diagnostic Chartny time two old IDE drives share a single cable. This can be accomplished by. Master and the other to Slave. The MasterSlave setting is set by jumpers. IDE. connector. The labeling for the jumpers is usually in shorthand, M for. Master and S for Slave. Some older drives include a jumper for Single. Since pre SATA motherboards always supported both a primary and. IDE interface, its not necessary with a two drive system to. The boot hard drive should always be the. Master on the primary IDE interface. If the CD, DVD, or any other IDE drive. Slave. Return to Diagnostic Chart the drives still dont register properly. The ribbon cable connectors must also be seated all. IDE port on both the drives and the motherboard, or adapter. RAID adapter. The most common reason for a cabling. Try a new ribbon cable. The. most common cable failure is right at the connectors, which can break open. The connectors arent soldered to the wires, the circuit. V shaped contacts forced through the plastic. Return to Diagnostic Chart the ribbon cable connectors and the IDE ports. Check the pin 1 location on all of the connectors and ports. On IDE. drives, pin 1 is traditionally located next to the power socket, but its. If the motherboard connector isnt boxed and. The pin 1 location on the motherboard is normally marked with an. If the motherboard wont register any drive you. IDE controller is bad or all the drives youve tried are. You can try running on the secondary IDE controller if youve only been. IDE adapter. or replacing the motherboard. Return to Diagnostic Chart is one of those cute acronyms you dont. Self Monitoring. Analysis and Reporting Technology SMART is basically a predictor of doom. Because the metrics defined. Not all motherboards support SMART reporting, and it may be enabled or disabled. CMOS Setup. Operating system support for SMART is also sketchy, but you. Windows and read the SMART information from the drive. If. you do get a message warning of impending drive failure from the operating. BIOS, it pays to back up your data and just. Just dont fall for the malware that. SMART. warnings Return to Diagnostic Chart troubleshooting procedures for ATA interfaced. BIOS are identical, whether they are. CDs, DVDs, tapes or any other ATA device. If the BIOS registers. ATA drives correctly and the drive youre having problems with. CD or DVD, proceed to the CD or DVD Failure diagnostics. Return to Diagnostic Chart State Drive SSD drive Again, the. SSD drives. SSD drives will never spin up and spin down in an unending. Mechanical hard drives almost never.