The troubleshooting of the disk drive is an important part of maintaining the computer system. The symptoms that usually happen in any of the storage media are described below. The first among the symptoms is that the storage drive is not being displayed. This may happen if the system is boot up for the first time. It is possible to configure the storage device and again install it properly then. But if the problem continuously persists then a major problem may exist in the future. It may also happen that at the startup the configuration of the information is also not displayed.

The other thing that may happen is that the BIOS on the host adapter cards that are used within the storage device cannot be located. In the case of the IDE or the ATA disk drives; the BIOS on the host adapter cards also can't locate drive. The storage media may not be displayed in the utilities that are called as the drive preparation utilities.

For example in the case of the Computer Management utilities in the Microsoft Windows Operating System or the Fdisk command utility that is used to partition the hard drive disks in the DOS. The symptom of the troubleshooting of the storage media is also that the proprietary disk preparation software or the disk setup program is supplied along with the IEEE 1394, parallel port cannot locate drive.

An example that will explain in detail the process of troubleshooting the storage media is given by the IDE or the ATA drive problems that are common to it. The ATA or the IDE is usually a 40 pin drive. If it so happens that the system’s power supply is not connected to the storage media drive, then the solution for this is that to shut down the system and reattach or attach the power cables or the connectors to the drive and again restart the system. The data cable or the data connector is not connected properly to the drive.

In such a case it is better to first switch the computer system off or shut it down then proceeds with the cable connections of the data. Or simply it is also permissible to reconnect the drive with the data cables to the interface of the IDE or the ATA. The next thing that may also happen is that the storage disk drive is configured as "no drive present". Then it is advised to check up the system utility or the BIOS at the system startup itself and to configure the BIOS to detect all the storage devices that are all connected to it. The BIOS settings are important.

If the Storage media or the hard disk drive is still not detecting then it is also possible that the jumpers of the master - slave may be not properly setup. The jumper setting should be corrected. In case there are two hard disk drives connected through a single data bus or data cable, then both hard disk drives must be correctly jumpered as the master or the slave.

In case of the 40 pin hard drive and a 80 pin hard disk drive is connected together and a problem arises then there may be incorrect hard disk drive jumpering. In such a situation all the drives on the cable should be jumpered as cable select.

There are many other troubleshooting points that should be considered depending upon the different types of the storage media devices like the USB or the SCSI etc.

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