I have a Dimension 9200 with 4GB of RAM and two Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250 GB hard drives which has been running well for 8 or 9 years.
However, it has recently stopped booting and displays the following message:
Drive 0 not found: Serial ATA, SATA-0
Drive 1 not found: Serial ATA, SATA-1
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility.
In addition, on the DELL splash page before this message is displayed, the splash remains for about one minute after the progress bar reaches its full extent. Meanwhile, the SATA-0 drive makes a continuous clicking sound (something like an old mechanical clock ticking every second).
Initially diagnostic lights 2 and 3 remain lit (possible floppy or hard drive failure according to the manual) until the machine beeps and moves off the Dell splash page to the message shown above. At exactly this point, diagnostic lights 1, 2 and 3 light up (manual says Another Failure has Occurred).
I have reseated both HDs which made no difference whatsoever.
I have also removed the data and power cables from the SATA-0 drive and rebooted. This time, no delay was seen when the splash page progress bar reached the end of its travel, no noise was heard from the remaining SATA-1 drive but the same message as above appeared once again as did the same diagnostic lights 1, 2 and 3
I have also moved the SATA-1 drive into the SATA-0 position and connected the data and power cables from SATA-0. However, the behaviour remained the same (note I'm using the Grub bootloader and it is installed on SATA-0, so the other disk is not bootable).
I have also booted from a USB key containing the GParted partition manager. This boots fine but the only disk it sees is the USB key. Neither of the SATA drives are recognized. This is worrying.
I have purchased a new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 with 250 GB which should arrive later this week. However, I'm beginning to think that the malfunctioning drive is not my only problem (and certainly, that's what the diagnostic lights 1,2 and 3 would seem to indicate).
I would be grateful for any clues, opinions or suggestions.
Thanks
Paul