Hard drive not showing up in BIOS

[Nostradamus]

I have a previously functional hard drive that is no longer recognized by the BIOS. Other drives are working fine. Just not this one. It has no scary clicking or grinding noises. It sounds lovely, in fact. Normal health read and spinning sounds. It even has the gyroscope feel if I pick it up.

Stuff I have tried unsuccessfully:
*Restart the computer
*Restart the computer again just in case
*Swap out cabling
*Use an external power source
*Use a SATA-to-USB adapter
*Use a different motherboard with a different BIOS and a different power supply
*Use a different motherboard with the USB adapter
*Swap out the controller board for a new one--same model and revision, but stole the flash memory chip off the old board so it had its calibration information right.

I'm thinking that the platters and read head and all are good. I seem to have ruled out the controller board as the culprit. Anybody have any ideas what might be the issue?

 

[ITLogicSystems]

You've pulled out all the stops. If the BIOS doesn't see the drive, there's not really anything more you can do. Drive has failed somehow. Send back to mfg. if still under warranty. Hope this helps!

 

[Nostradamus]

I'm really more concerned about the data than the drive. If I had my data, the drive could go to drive heaven. Might have to go platter swap on this one, but I don't like the cost outlook on that option.

Does anybody know what component of the hard drive tells the BIOS, "I'm here!"? Not that I have a class 1 clean room lying around anywhere, but if I can repair it myself, that would be legit.

 

[joshua1310]

The same thing has happened to me, hdd won't show up in bios so that means I can't reinstall windows because it never finds a drive, cd drive and usb's working fine and I know it is not the hard drive because I have tried about 8 different driives and aloso plugged it in everywhere, swapped all the cabels, but nothing works :s... ANYONE KNOW HOW TO HELP???

 

[51Moh Vue]

The same thing has happened to me, I still used my laptop yesterday, but today I can not go to windows. hdd won't show up in bios so that means I can't go to the Windows or reinstall windows because it never finds a drive. and I know it is not the hard drive because I put the hard drive to other laptop and the hard drive work fine. When I tried to install windows and it says " It needs the Driver" ANYONE KNOW PLEASE HELP???

 

[Zoltan Head]

It sounds like the electronics on the HDD have failed, rather than anything mechanical - one (potentially quite expensive!) way to attempt a fix is if you can get hold of a drive of the same model and perform a control board transplant, without touching the platter/heads, otherwise I'm not sure how to retrieve the data.