I've been having trouble with my family's ASUS laptop recently. It keeps booting directly into the BIOS, and after checking, it turns out that the hard drive isn't being detected at all. I've done my fair share of building and debugging desktop PCs, but laptops are a whole new ball game for me. Plus, the hard drive has important data that hasn't been backed up, so recovering it is pretty crucial. Interestingly, it did manage to boot into BIOS like this about a month ago, but it eventually started up normally after that. Any advice on what steps I should take next?
1 Answer
It sounds like you’re in a bit of a tricky situation. If the drive isn't showing up at all, there's a couple of things you can try. The simplest is to connect the drive to another working computer using an external enclosure or a USB adapter. That way, you can see if the drive is recognized on a different system.
If that doesn’t work, consider booting a live Linux USB. You can check if Linux can detect the drive; sometimes it can see things that Windows can't. And if all else fails, sending the drive in for professional data recovery is a safer bet, especially since your data is important.
Thanks for the tips! For connecting the drive to another computer, what do I need? Just a USB adapter? And as for the Linux option, where can I find a good ISO to download?