Editing Openai/690f8ac2-4e38-8012-b650-1cba68fd0972 (section)

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* The 8460p uses a SATA connection on a small adapter board that can come loose.
* Vibration or pulling the bottom cover off can partially unseat it.

→ Quick test:

# Power off, remove the battery and AC adapter.
# Open the bottom panel (two latches).
# Slide the HDD/SSD out, check the SATA contacts, reseat firmly.
# Boot into BIOS and check File → System Information again.

If it now appears, the issue was purely mechanical. (Common after OS reinstall attempts.)

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Sometimes BIOS flips from AHCI to RAID or vice-versa after reset.
When that happens, older SSDs/HDDs can “disappear” until the correct mode is restored.

→ Check this:

# In BIOS, open System Configuration → Device Configurations (sometimes “Built-in Device Options”).
# Look for SATA Device Mode or SATA Native Mode. * Set it to AHCI (not RAID or IDE).
# Save and reboot to BIOS.
# See if the drive now shows under File → System Information.

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If neither reseating nor AHCI helps and the drive was visible under Windows recently, then BIOS may be unable to read the drive’s GPT because of a damaged partition table or boot sector.

You can test this with the Zorin Live USB:

# Boot the Live USB.
# At the “Try or Install Zorin” screen, choose Try Zorin.
# Open Terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and run: <syntaxhighlight lang="bash"> sudo lsblk </syntaxhighlight> or <syntaxhighlight lang="bash"> sudo fdisk -l </syntaxhighlight> * If the drive appears here, the BIOS just isn’t recognizing it, but Linux still can. You can back up data and reinstall normally. * If the drive does not appear, it’s not responding on the SATA bus → either connector or hardware failure.