No hard drive found ONLY on cold boot

[labtech]

What is the hard drive model inside the AIO, please? Since the machine is booting, can grab drive model from device manager, so physical drive removal isn't necessary.

 

[Diggs]

...Reason #101 why I hate AIO's.

No one likes AIOs but a laptop is the AOI's devil-child and no one says anything........

 

[carmen617]

No one likes AIOs but a laptop is the AOI's devil-child and no one says anything........

That's right. I used to tell my clients that AIO's combined all the disadvantages of a laptop with all the disadvantages of a desktop. However, I can see the appeal, especially for older people with small homes who want something with a big screen and don't want to worry about a lot of cables and a big tower to place somewhere.

This particular AIO, a Dell Inspiron 23 model, is particularly easy to do basic service on. The stand pops off with a press of a button, there are two buttons to release the back, the back pulls off easily and then there's a metal cage cover to slide off to access the RAM and the hard drive. The hard drive is in a plastic caddy and I don't even have to pull out a screwdriver to swap it out. Well designed for simple maintenance, a lot better than most current laptops, but I'm not replacing the motherboard and there are no alternative cabling options.

The hard drive currently installed is a 2.5" 5400 RPM WD Blue drive, WD0jpxv-76JC3TO. I tried swapping it with an identical drive, and with a Seagate 7500 RPM slim drive, both with the exact same result.

 

[coffee]

Could you post the service tag on that puppy?

Im thinking controller chip for sata. But not having it in front of me is a big disadvantage. Cant really say too much then. But would like to have an idea of the hardware in it to go any further.

 

[labtech]

Thanks for your reply on the hard drive model. It is a regular WD Blue Series HDD, not a hybrid drive (SSHD). Sometimes the cache on hybrids can act strangely or fail.
Furthermore, your test with other drive models and replicating the problem, kind of rules out the drive itself as a hardware failure.

At this point, I would attempt replicating the behavior with a Linux installation with the goal of ruling out anything Windows related.