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The BIOS does not detect or recognize the ATA / SATA hard drive Tips and tricks for troubleshooting a Serial ATA or ATA/IDE internal drive that is not detected in the BIOS.
There are six main reasons why a system BIOS will not detect the presence of an internal hard drive. Here is a list of them. They are not in any particular order, but you can follow these steps one by one to troubleshoot this problem:

1. Drive not enabled in the BIOS
2. Serial ATA drivers are not properly installed
3. Faulty or unplugged data cable
4. Drive is not spinning up
5. Incorrect jumper settings on the drive
6. Faulty hard drive

Note: Sections 3, 4, 5, and 6 pertain to PC or Mac systems. Sections 1 and 2 pertain only to PC systems.
For more detailed step-by-step troubleshooting on this topic, please see the Seagate Serial ATA troubleshooter "Drive Not Detected" section.
After verifying that your ATA or SATA port is set to Auto-Detect or is enabled, if you find that your disk drive is not being detected (auto-detected) by the system BIOS, try the following steps to try and isolate/troubleshoot the problem.

1. this link can be useful.
   
   System setup is where the date and time are stored and where startup preferences like NumLock or Passwords are defined. In addition, many hardware settings are defined in System Setup.
   In particular, hard disk drives are often controlled here. At the simplest level, hard drives are numbered in Setup as Drive 0, Drive 1, etc or sometimes as Primary Master, Primary Slave. Which ever way these are named, they have a basic ON / OFF setting (sometimes AUTOMATIC or something similar). If your drive is not detected it may be because it is turned OFF in System Setup.
   In most cases, the boot drive is Drive 0 or Primary Master. When you add a second drive to the system, it may be need to be enabled by turning it ON in System Setup.
   
   Sample screen shot showing a Dell System Setup section for disk drives:
   
2. 
3. To be able to hit the F6 button, you must restart the Setup process, and watch the bottom of the screen after pressing Enter on the "Welcome to Setup" screen. There will be some moments of files being loaded, and then you should see a message appear that says "Press F6 if you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver". This message will only stay on the screen for a couple of seconds, so press F6 as soon as you see it appear.
   
   (Click to expand)
   
4. After this is done, you will see other messages appear, and it will act as though nothing is happening, but eventually a screen will appear that will allow you to install the drivers for the add-in SATA controller. The screen will look like the sample below:
   
   (Click to expand)
   
5. After you press S, the driver install process will continue and the floppy diskettes will be needed. Further instructions will be furnished after the driver install process has ended.
   
   (Click to expand)
   
6. Insert the floppy diskette containing the drivers for the add-in Serial ATA controller.
7. Once the drivers are loaded, proceed with the normal Windows XP/2000 installation.

A few further notes on the driver diskette:
For the hard drive to be detected in a new installation, the drivers for the add-in SATA controller/motherboard must be loaded at the beginning of installation.
The drivers for the controller/motherboard can probably be found either on the CD that came with it or on the manufacturer's website. These drivers do not come from Seagate; they come from the motherboard manufacturer. Simply load the required drivers on the diskette and have it ready.

Document ID: 182453.

Here are some images of Serial ATA cables. Click to expand.

The BIOS will not detect a hard disk if the data cable is damaged or the connection is incorrect.
Serial ATA cables, in particular, can sometimes fall out of their connection. Be sure to check your SATA cables are tightly connected to the SATA port connection.

The easiest way to test a cable is to replace it with another cable. If the problem persists, then the cable was not the cause of the problem.

For ATA drives, Seagate recommends using UDMA cabling with a maximum length of 18 inches. UDMA cables have color coded connections which require proper orientation when connecting.

• Blue connector - always connects to the motherboard.
• Grey (middle) connector - is used for slave devices on the cable.
• Black connector - is used for master device connection.

See this image:
(Click to expand)

to determine whether it is providing sufficient electrical power to operate the drives and devices you have in your computer.

If the drive is still not spinning, connect it in another computer if possible.

Connect the drive in a SATA-USB enclosure or something similar if possible.

If the drive does not spin up after all of these steps, please visit the Warranty page to begin a warranty replacement order.

-- (Click to expand) Jumper settings for Seagate SATA drives
- -- (Click to expand) Jumper settings for Maxtor-brand SATA drives

ATA: It is recommended that all Seagate ATA hard disks supporting the Cable Select jumper option be configured as Cable Select. If your computer system was built prior to October 1998 and does not support UDMA 66 or greater you will be required to use the Master/Slave jumper settings.

- -- (Click to expand) Jumper settings for Seagate ATA drives
- -- (Click to expand) Jumper settings for Maxtor-brand ATA drives

When using Cable Select jumper settings on your ATA drive, all devices connected to the UDMA cable must also use the Cable Select setting. The cable decides master/slave device detection when the cable select jumper settings are used.

SeaTools for DOS (see the tutorial here) to test the drive. If SeaTools does not detect the drive after the steps followed above, or an error code that signifies drive failure displays, please proceed to the our Warranty Services page to begin a warranty replacement order.

The BIOS does not detect or recognize the ATA SATA hard drive

Ok. It sounds like something happened inside the BIOS settings for the machine. Most PCs todays do NOT have 3.5" floppy disk drives (drive A) anymore. There is a place in the BIOS where you select the type and size floppy drive connected as drive A. One of the options is "NOT INSTALLED" . If your BIOS setting shows a floppy drive and there is none present, every time you boot up it will give the Floppy disk seek error you mention. Next time your boot, select the F2 option. Check to see if a floppy drive is selected. If so, change to NOT INSTALLED. Also, there may be on the advanced page an option of "Floppy seek at bootup" . You can disable this and that will help as well.

maybe the floppy disk drive is defective or maybe the IDE cable is deffective, or maybe the cable on the floppy drive is not properly inserted , try to replace IDE cable of the floppy drive if still the symptoms happens replace the floppy drive

The "floppy" disk-drive (3.5-inch diskette) on your computer is broken.
Press F1 to ignore the error, and to boot from your C: drive.
Or, press F2 to enter BIOS SETUP, and then navigate through those "setup" screens to tell the computer to "disable floppy seek", or change the setting from "3.5 1.44Mb drive" to "none".
Or, take the computer to a technician, and buy a replacement disk-drive, and get it installed.

Please verify that your jumper settings on the new HD are set to Slave. If not move the jumper to the correct setting and reboot the PC.

sounds like your floppy drive is failing, you could get it replaced or simply turn it off via the BIOS.
to turn it off simply hit the F2 key. On the first screen usually it will list your Hard Drives, CD ROMs', and the Floppy. scroll down to the floppy and hit enter ot the corresponding key form the bios's legend at the bottom or right hand side of the screen untill you see disable.
Next you can navigate to Save & exit or hit F10 to do the same. G/L.

Press F2 to enter the Bios, on the first screen navigate to the floppy A: drive select disable and the error should go away.

From the sounds of it your Floppy drive is damaged or just bad. you can take it for repair or purchase a new one fairly cheap and replace it yourself. But just disabling it should do the trick since floppy's are pretty much obsolete.

the recovery Disk wont help you unless its an error you get in windows itself btw.. (unless its a OS start problem which this doesn't seem to be)

Sounds like you have a bad/disconnected Hard Drive and the system is looking for a second boot device (ie: Floppy with a disk) or your primary IDE channel on your motherboard is bad

Boot into setup by pressing F2 or F10 depending on your bios and disable the floppy drive setting.

some motherboards and processors are compatiable with certain hd's only. Here is a list:

Pentium: 2GB through 5GB
Pentium 2:5GB through 20GB
Pentium 3: 20GB through 40GB
Pentium 4: 40GB through 500GB
Pentium D: 40GB through 1TB
Celeron: 2GB through 500GB
All AMD's: 300MB to whatever.

so, that's probably your problem. I suggest