Good day experts,

We encountered a boot failure in one of our hmis (specifically the slave hmi, please see attached picture).

We tried to boot from hard drive in the boot manager but unfortunately no hard drive was detected.

We also replaced cmos battery, but still the problem exists.

Could it be a hard drive problem? How can we backup the hmi before we replace if needed?

We have a master hmi that is still ok (the device with problem is the slave hmi),

Thanks!

If the BIOS is not seeing the drive that it used to boot from, then either the drive has failed, the drive controller has failed, or a data or power cable to the drive has become loose or has failed.  Of these options, the most probable is that the drive has failed, but checking the cables (unplugging and replugging them) is always a good idea because it is much easier to fix than a failed drive.

Before disassembling anything, be sure to do a full power off, wait a few minutes then power on test.  By power off, I don't mean just rebooting or even doing a shutdown: I mean turning off breakers feeding power to the IPC.  Sometimes PC's can get into a confused state, and a full power off cycle can sometimes bring them back to a working state.

If the cable is not the problem, then the next thing I would try is removing the drive from the IPC and connecting it to another PC using a PCI/USB adapter (assuming it is a PCI drive - if not then USB to most drive interface adapters are available).  Make sure that the IPC has power disconnected and you are using static-control procedures while removing the drive from the IPC.  If another PC can talk to the drive, the problem is likely to be the drive controller in the IPC.  If the other PC is unable to talk to the drive, then the drive has failed.

If, at any time, you get any PC to talk to the drive, immediately take the opportunity to make a backup of the drive.

Data can sometimes be recovered from failed drives, but it takes data recovery specialists to do this, and the process is usually quite expensive.

Good day sir,

 please see attached picture. thanks!