"Hard Drive Not Found" on my Dell Inspiron

Nomiko13

For some strange reason, my Dell laptop had that message pop up and Startup Repair has been checking my system for problems for two hours.

My laptop has never had this issue. The last time it had that "Hard Drive" cannot be found" message, it worked after I just shut my laptop off and cut it back on.

I'm panicking because I have all of my Sims 3 AND Sims 4 saves on there and I haven't backed up anything yet.

Does anyone know how to help with this issue?

rosemow

Hello
This is a link to Hard drive troubleshooting steps on the Dell webpages.
I hope that it may help
https://www.dell.com/support/article/SLN115919/en

ByondTime89

I had a Dell too and when this happened to me my hard drive was completely shot, I had to get a new one. But if your hard drive isn't completely corrupted you have a couple options and I've done all these for both my computer and a friends when the same thing happened.

First though, have you tried restoring a previous point? Or any of the repairs it suggests that don't require you to totally wipe to Factory Settings? If none of those work you can consider these:

1. Put your hard drive in another laptop and see if you can pull the files from it that way, and put them on an external hard drive or a USB drive for safe keeping.

2. Get a SATA to USB cable. This is essential the same as ^ method but instead of replace the computer's hard drive with your's, you're simply using yours like an external hard drive and you'll be able to easily copy and paste your files directly to the computer.

3. As a last resort you can follow the instructions on this site, as I did personally (twice) and see if your computer boots up this way to allow you to get your files. It's a lot more of a pain, since Linux is weird, but as long as your hard drive isn't totally corrupted it does work. You'll need a large enough EMPTY USB drive though, because this program uses the USB to boot up your computer, so it'll erase everything on it.

Those are all the things I've personally done to try to get my files back. If you're patient and they're important enough you should consider these and hopefully they work for you! Otherwise, you may have to count your losses, and either do a Factory Restore or get a new hard drive >_<

GOOD LUCK!!