Hard Drive/Bios problem, halp!

well this morning my computer decided to randomly reboot itself, rebooting into my bios screen. (motherboard being an Asus m3a78 and Hard drive is, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 320GB SATA-II)

Now my computer is 5 months old, with no previous problems.

The computer hangs at bios screen (tab for POST bios message, del for setup .etc), until it gives me a message "please reboot and insert valid boot media" or something along those lines. After checking all cables - twice (swapping cables aswell), i looked through the bios setup and it simply wasnt detecting the SATA drive, resetting settings and the like didnt help. changing SATA socket didnt help, ive also read up on the internet to unplug my hdd and then power socket, and letting it sit before reconnecting - didnt help! :<

Im guessing that flashing my bios is my last resort but id rather not, i have no experience in it.

Ah, the now infamous bad Seagate drive. I know yours says 7200.11 but .12 was effected too iirc.

Best bet, return the drive and demand a Western Digital replacement.

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128092
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128514

Yeah Seagate sadly sucks atm, I've been using them for years but lately they've been trash, fortunately my .10 drives haven't crapped out on me yet.

yeah, mine gave me the exact same thing a few months ago. your drive is toast. RMA it.

alternatively, you can just give up on the drive and buy a new one, like the caviar black series from WD. i've RMA'd my drive twice now. the first time it started to deteriorate after a month, and this one is still going... so far at least.

if possible try it in another machine and try to get important data off but im afraid your drive is gone

If you get a new drive, you should refer to this Data Recovery article.

well that really sucks :/

Thanks for the data recovery article. ill have to RMA this one, i cant afford a new HDD atm.

If you have an external drive and your mobo supports it you could run your OS off of that until you get your new HDD back.