Changing SATA mode on Acer Aspire 5 A515-51G-37K9

VyZi

The problem is not even the BIOS sees the hard drive

About installing Windows 7, it's pretty simple, I just installed it from inside Windows 10, installed the Intel USB 3.0 drivers, then some updates, then I've used my phone to share the WiFi via USB as it wasn't working even via ethernet, downloaded Driver Booster 8 from Computer World, and used it download all the drivers, then used DDU to fix the NVIDIA drivers not being able to be installed, and all done!

JackE

Well, yeah, a virtual Linux should work fine. With VMWare's WorkStationPlayer freeware, you can install Win98SE, WinXP, Linux & Win7 all on the same machine, all running at the same time. But you have trouble doing it with native 64-bit  operating systems.

VyZi

The problem is not with my OS tho, the OS was working perfectly, it seems my drive just died

I was just playing and I suddenly got a bluescreen of "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" after a restart, Windows 7 was bluescreening with "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME", I booted into Windows 10 and it worked, in both explorer  and cmd the Windows 7 and Stuff partitions were unaccessible, note that Partition Wizard could still access these, Windows 10 after a while noticed there's an error with the drive and offered to restart and start CHKDSK automatically, after 2 hours on about 55% Windows 10 bluescreened with "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED" after I restarted, the laptop said there's no bootable device, I've checked the BIOS and the drive wasn't listed there anymore, I've checked if the drive is well connected to the SATA cable and it was all good, the drive was spinning by the way, I don't really know what is the problem

JackE

What virtual machine software are you using with Win10? VirtualBox? VMWare? 

PartitionWizard will have issues trying the run a diagnostic or repair service on a virtual Win7 machine. That's because Win7 is not the real operating system that's controlling the hardware. Win10 is the operating system controlling the hardware. Win10 controls how Win7 will use the disk space either as a dynamically or statiically however you set it up. 

VyZi

Hold up, the drive issues mentioned before happened on my real hardware and not a VM, the BIOS can't seem to recognise the drive as the model and name parts are empty, I can't load into Windows anymore and drive diagnostic tools can't see the drive

JackE

If the BIOS ---INFORMATION TAB--- can't see the drive then the drive has crashed or not connected to the mainboard buss. Possibly the drive connector or cable to the mainboard is bad.

VyZi

Forgot to respond lol, the heads died probably, as the drive doesn't work on other computers too, I see spending 500 bucks for someone to replace the head for me to get music, programs and game saves back as a kinda waste, so maybe I will attempt the head transplant myself sometime, kind of sucks that I will have to buy the drive just for the head but what can you do about it

JackE

You can try to connect in to a USB port of another machine with an inexpensive 2.5" USB-to-HDD connector to see if you can access and copy personal files. It might still be accessible this way.

VyZi

Probably nope, if perfectly fine SATA connectors can't get the drive to read then a SATA to USB adapter probably won't work, as said, the drive makes clicking noises so it's probably a mechanical failure, quite possibly with the heads

JackE

Agreed, but at less than $10 it's worth a try plus comes handy if you want to clone or migrate a drive in the future.

VyZi

Do you maybe have an idea what could have happened? While clicking is most likely a sign of mechanical problem, I find it just weird for a drive to work perfectly and die seconds later for absolutely no reason

JackE

Very subjective. You may not have noticed a problem initially, but It may not have been working perfectly. The read/write head initially contacting the spinning disk often start ro fail that way. Disks have such high capacities these days, the head crash might be in a free space area on the platter without any files yet so you wouldn't notice anything was wrong. But as time goes on, more and more parts of the disk are destroyed . At some point with enough head disk contacts being made, disks spinning at 5000-8000rpm are going to catastrophically fail.   

VyZi

Alright so that's what I got after all the research

The bios is the only thing that sees the drive, but seems to can't see it's name

Not a single diagnostic tool, both DOS and Linux, can't see the drive and doesn't even try to initialise it

The WD DLG program seems to try to initialise the drive, the drive makes five clicks and the error code of 0132 (which means I'm using a wrong version, even if it's the right one) at the same time of the fifth click

Tried HDSentinel, but the DOS version doesn't come up with anything interesting

I've tried GSmartControl to view the SMART status, but it can't see the drive too

I'll try buying the adapter that you showed me, because I'll probably need it anyway, and I've found it in a local store

Now I know that opening the drive isn't the greatest idea, but I've opened it to see if there's anything interesting going on inside (it had no warranty anymore anyways, and I've opened it in a very clean room and I made sure that no dust falls on it, the data is cool to have, not need to have) upon booting the drive, it starts spinning, the arm goes to around the middle of the platter and comes back to the parking place five times and spins down

Kind of looks like if the arm searched for a specific sector, maybe the boot sector or something? No way to know for no because of no access to the drive

JackE

It might've been better to try to first access the drive with the USB adapter. The head gap on HDDs is only 10nm or less.

VyZi

Yeah, I'll try that when I'll buy it, I'm not really sure if it will help, but maybe it will somehow be able to catch anything from the drive, honestly it would be great if literally anything could see the drive, and if the name was visible again in the bios

JackE

What I'm trying to say is that, with a head gap of 10nm, don't try to open it up again no matter how clean you think your very clean room is. The chances of recovering anything from the drive with the USB adapter becomes much less when its platters are exposed.

VyZi

That's right, and that's why I won't open it again unless that's completely necessary, I also have some additional information if that's somehow useful (and some stuff that should clear possible confusion from the previous)

When I boot up the laptop, what exactly happens is, the drive spins up clicks 5 times then spins down, then it does the same thing, shows the Acer logo for a split second and continues, either letting me press F12 or just booting from the HDD, giving me the No boot disk error, which probably means it actually tried booting from the drive, but didn't find any boot files, now that's what happens on the default AHCI mode, now, I've tried to boot up in RST with Optane mode out of curiosity, on boot, the drive goes in the spin up, five clicks and spin down sequence, however it doesn't do it the second time, instead it shows the Acer logo, then shows that kind of cursor like thingy like before the Windows Boot Manager loads, does nothing for a while, then the PC speaker makes a loud beep for around 6 and lets me get into the F12 menu, diagnostic tools still don't see the drive, however I've tried Linux ones only now, and I will try DOS ones later, the BIOS see the HDD, but still can't see it's name

If it was confusing, what I've meant by saying the HDD has no name in the bios is that when no drive is detected, the bios just says none and doesn't display it in the F12 menu, when the HDD was still working it displayed it's name in the bios, now, it's detected and shows up in the F12 menu, but it's name is completely empty