GS43VR - Hard Drive missing

Hello,
So, I have my OS_Install (C working well. But, the hard disk drive is missing. I haven't changed any hardware or software (aside from deleting bloat and things I don't use).

Disk Management and Device Manager.


I haven't been able to find anything online, but I'm not very proficient with this type of thing.

Thanks
Alex

 

Open the back cover and see if the HDD is in there or not.

 

My bad, I should have clarified.

The computer was purchased brand new; the secondary hard drive used to work.

I am not sure at exactly what point it disappeared; perhaps an update? i'm really not sure exactly when it disappeared; but it's 100% physically in there.

 

Ok, so it's there, then it might be defective which means it needs to be replaced. You can contact MSI and see if they can let you do a swap for HDD only via RMA.

 

Okay. So there is no way the HDD is functional?

Thanks for responding

 

Easiest way to test this is to buy a SATA to USB adapter, unhook the hard drive from the laptop internally, and then hook it either to the USB port of the laptop or even directly to the SATA port on your desktop PC (or USB port). If the hard drive works, then you know the drive is perfectly functional.

In SOME cases, you may not be able to read the drive when you hook it up to the desktop, when using the SATA to USB adapter (not directly through the SATA port) though the drive shows up, you may get an error in computer drive management, something related to "Basic disk" or "Volume creation error." I don't remember the exact error, but there is a tool to fix this, regarding using HxD and changing one byte on the HDD's boot record, which then removes the error. I'm not even sure if its HXD or another tool you need.

 

If you have a spare 2.5" HDD sitting around that you know is working, you can plug it into the system to verify. Or you can do what Falkentyne said. But if it's not visible in the device manager then most likely it's the HDD rather than PCB itself.