The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    M17x R3 - Hard Drives Not Detected

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Rickards12, Aug 26, 2012.

  1. Rickards12

    Rickards12 Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    15
    Messages:
    96
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Last Thursday, I woke up, unlocked my computer, and it turned off. When I turned it back on, Windows Boot Loader said that the boot device was inaccessible. I threw in my Windows 7 Setup CD and Setup was unable to repair the boot partition or do a fresh install of Windows because it couldn't detect ANY of my two drives. After a frustrating hour of reboots and putting back in the hard drives, the computer finally detected them and went to boot into Windows.

    Still, I'm worried that this will happen again. I have the feeling that this is a motherboard issue more than hard drive since both were affected. Thoughts?
     
  2. radji

    radji Farewell, Solenya...

    Reputations:
    3,856
    Messages:
    3,074
    Likes Received:
    2,619
    Trophy Points:
    231
    Only time that happened to me is when I converted my optical drive bay to a 3rd hard drive. Before the next startup, I plugged my ODD into my system via eSATAp, and when I booted, the BIOS did not detect my SSD. It turned out I needed to disable the USB powershare setting in the BIOS and reset the drive boot order under the power tab in the BIOS. Works fine now and hasn't happened since.
     
  3. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

    Reputations:
    3,658
    Messages:
    6,874
    Likes Received:
    969
    Trophy Points:
    281
    If it happens again you can let us know by sending an e-mail to [email protected] with your tag, phone and a brief description of the issue and we'll get back to you ASAP.
     
  4. eljoelo

    eljoelo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    3
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I got a problem like that only if i leave the laptop alone for long periods of time
    Like one hour + still im using the 750 gb harddrive from seagate