Deleted hard drive partition, now hard drive is undetectible

A while back I was going through an older laptop, and cleaned out the hard drive, and made a mistake by going into disk managment and deleting the entire hard drive, and after that was done, nothing would read the hard drive anymore. Not the laptop, not my desktop, nothing. Is there a way I can get my computer or laptop to recognize the hard drive again? I've never ran into this issue before.

Any advice would be helpful, or just tell me if I'm screwed lol.

BIOS wont detect the hard drive... I'll my WIndows 7 disc, I think I tried it last time and it didn't work...Chevydog89

Windows does not let you "delete" a drive, only partitions. You can mark physical volumes as offline, but they still show up in the OS. If your BIOS isn't detecting your drive, then the problem is unrelated to any action you took in the OS. It's much more likely that your drive has simply failed (assuming that you double checked all your connections).

-Byshop

[QUOTE="Chevydog89"]BIOS wont detect the hard drive... I'll my WIndows 7 disc, I think I tried it last time and it didn't work...Byshop

Windows does not let you "delete" a drive, only partitions. You can mark physical volumes as offline, but they still show up in the OS. If your BIOS isn't detecting your drive, then the problem is unrelated to any action you took in the OS. It's much more likely that your drive has simply failed (assuming that you double checked all your connections).

-Byshop

"It might only show up in your Disk Management area of Control Panel>>Administrative Tools."

He already said he went into Disk Management to delete his partition so I assume he knows to look there.

"But if your BIOS doesn't see it, there is a loose power or data cable somewhere."

Yup, that's what I said. That or the drive has failed.

-Byshop

I think I have done this before when I cleard the partition that had the boot manager on it. Try booting from a CD if possible. I'd use a free program called Parted Magic, but there are many programs you could use.

That's the odd thing though, and makes me feel like the hard drive still works, but it's just "lost" if that makes any sense. Before I deleted it's information, it worked perfect. I had just restored it back to factory settings before I deleted the information, and the only reason I did that was because I was going to install WindowsXP on it. Then suddenly, after I deleted the information, it can't be detected.

I downloaded a WesterDigital tool, and still couldn't get the drive detected. I'm honestly not sure what happened.

That's the odd thing though, and makes me feel like the hard drive still works, but it's just "lost" if that makes any sense. Before I deleted it's information, it worked perfect. I had just restored it back to factory settings before I deleted the information, and the only reason I did that was because I was going to install WindowsXP on it. Then suddenly, after I deleted the information, it can't be detected.

I downloaded a WesterDigital tool, and still couldn't get the drive detected. I'm honestly not sure what happened.

Chevydog89

Short of not correctly connecting the hard drive, there's nothing that -you- can do to make it not detect in the BIOS. The BIOS is just that, it's the Basic Input Output System for the computer. The BIOS presents the drive to the OS, not the other way around. If the BIOS doesn't see it, then the most likely cause is that the drive has failed. The drive can still physically spin up but if the controller board is shot then you won't be able to get it to work.

The only other possibility is that you might have flipped something in the BIOS that disabled the port the drive is connecting too, but that's not something you can do in the OS. If you want to be absolutely certain it's the drive, you can try it in another computer (if you have one) or reset the BIOS to default settings. Be careful with that last one, because you can cause your OS to fail to boot if you don't know what you're doing.

-Byshop

A while back I was going through an older laptop, and cleaned out the hard drive, and made a mistake by going into disk managment and deleting the entire hard drive, and after that was done, nothing would read the hard drive anymore. Not the laptop, not my desktop, nothing. Is there a way I can get my computer or laptop to recognize the hard drive again? I've never ran into this issue before.

 

Any advice would be helpful, or just tell me if I'm screwed lol.

Chevydog89

Short of not correctly connecting the hard drive, there's nothing that -you- can do to make it not detect in the BIOS. The BIOS is just that, it's the Basic Input Output System for the computer. The BIOS presents the drive to the OS, not the other way around. If the BIOS doesn't see it, then the most likely cause is that the drive has failed. The drive can still physically spin up but if the controller board is shot then you won't be able to get it to work.

The only other possibility is that you might have flipped something in the BIOS that disabled the port the drive is connecting too, but that's not something you can do in the OS. If you want to be absolutely certain it's the drive, you can try it in another computer (if you have one) or reset the BIOS to default settings. Be careful with that last one, because you can cause your OS to fail to boot if you don't know what you're doing.

-Byshop

Byshop

It's connected correctly, it was connected to another computer and still wouldn't show up. I really have no idea how it went from working perfect, to not working at all. Maybe I'll shock the stupid thing and see if it comes to life lol, totally kidding.

Yes, I do know my way around a computer very well, even if I don't sound like it. I've just never had a hard drive do this to me before and leave me at a complete loss at wondering what in the world happened. More then likely I'll just stick with it failed and there's nothing else I can do with it. I may try one more thing and turn my BIOS back to default settings, it hasn't had that done to it since I installed Windows 7, I'm not too worried about anything happening to it when I do that, nothing has ever happened before.

Thanks for the help, it's appreciated.

"It might only show up in your Disk Management area of Control Panel>>Administrative Tools."

He already said he went into Disk Management to delete his partition so I assume he knows to look there.

Byshop

[QUOTE="Byshop"]

"It might only show up in your Disk Management area of Control Panel>>Administrative Tools."

He already said he went into Disk Management to delete his partition so I assume he knows to look there.

Gammit10

No, I do know that. I clearly stated I have looked there.

[QUOTE="Gammit10"][QUOTE="Byshop"]

"It might only show up in your Disk Management area of Control Panel>>Administrative Tools."

He already said he went into Disk Management to delete his partition so I assume he knows to look there.

Chevydog89

No, I do know that. I clearly stated I have looked there.

Yeah, I was commenting on the fact that you specifically said you used it to delete the partition so it really wasn't a guess.

Regarding the drive, sometimes they just fail. All hard drives are doomed to eventually fail, although typically the problems are mechanical. Sometimes, however, the control boards just fail. That's what it sounds like has happened here.

-Byshop

I think you're screwed.

You will have to do a clean installation of Windows.

[QUOTE="Gammit10"][QUOTE="Byshop"]

"It might only show up in your Disk Management area of Control Panel>>Administrative Tools."

He already said he went into Disk Management to delete his partition so I assume he knows to look there.

Chevydog89

No, I do know that. I clearly stated I have looked there.

I work with hardware and software.  Accuracy and precision are paramount.

[QUOTE="Chevydog89"]

[QUOTE="Gammit10"] No, I wouldn't assume that. I know several people who have made that mistake once, including myself.

Byshop

No, I do know that. I clearly stated I have looked there.

Yeah, I was commenting on the fact that you specifically said you used it to delete the partition so it really wasn't a guess..

-Byshop

Yes, it really was a guess. The OP stated he went there to delete the partition, but nowhere did he state he went back there to look. As I have made that exact procedural error before, I thought I would try to help either the OP or anybody else who views this at a later time.Gammit10

I think it's far more likely that you just read the op's post too fast, missed the fact that he already mentioned Disk Management, and now you're backpeddling with rationalizations to cover.

If you really did see that he had used Disk Management in the first place, then why did you give him directions on how to find it in your post when he obviously already knows where it is? :roll:

-Byshop