ASUS G73SW Laptop BIOS Not Recognizing Hard Drives

[Technomann2]

I have 2 ASUS G73SW laptops, both of which have recently developed a strange problem. In the first laptop I simply replaced the secondary D drive, which contains all of my data. The problem is that this new D drive is not recognized by the BIOS, so it does not appear in WIndows Explorer or Device Manager. If I connect this D drive via USB, I can access all of my files and folders just fine.

With the second G73SW laptop I recently cloned a copy of the System C drive and swapped it out. However on boot up I get the error message that there is no MBR to be found. If I reboot and tap the ESC key, I get a small BIOS-like screen where the new cloned C drive actually does appear. I can then select the new drive from the list and boot up into WIndows. If I enter the BIOS setup, however, the old C drive still appears and not the new one. No amount of manipulation in the BIOS seems to be able to change that.

What the heck is going on here? Any ideas on how to fix this? I flashed the BIOS on the first machine to no avail...

[JustinThyme]

Firstly this model is 8 years old, an eternity in the PC world.*
Secondly what drives are you trying to replace with and how did you clone/set up. May be that they are just not compatible. *I can’t speak for this one but one model newer the G74sx I had and replaced the spinner with a Samsung 850 pro SSD. Steer clear of budget bargain basement drives as they can even be problematic on current machines. *

[Technomann2]

JustinThyme wrote:
Firstly this model is 8 years old, an eternity in the PC world.*
Secondly what drives are you trying to replace with and how did you clone/set up. May be that they are just not compatible. *I can’t speak for this one but one model newer the G74sx I had and replaced the spinner with a Samsung 850 pro SSD. Steer clear of budget bargain basement drives as they can even be problematic on current machines. *

For the cloning of the C hard drive I used a program called EaseUS Todo Backup Home v 11.5. I used to use Acronis True Image, but this program is too problematic, giving me error messages whenever I try to clone. The EaseUS Todo Backup program seemed to work just fine. The new disc that I cloned to is a Samsung SSD 860 EVO. The clone seemed to be successful, except for the drive not being recognized in the BIOS.

Yes, my rig is 8 years old. It has served me well. It still runs Windows 7 without any problems. If I were to purchase a new laptop, what are some of the latest, best ASUS machines on the market right now? What would you recommend? I am not much into gaming, but need high performance mainly for Photoshop image editing and andio and video editing. Since Microsoft screwed up WIndows 10 so badly with recent updates, I am VERY reluctant to go to WIndows 10. But I would like to stick with the ASUS brand. What are some good, powerful new ASUS laptops?

[cl-Albert]

Technomann2 wrote:
I have 2 ASUS G73SW laptops, both of which have recently developed a strange problem. In the first laptop I simply replaced the secondary D drive, which contains all of my data. The problem is that this new D drive is not recognized by the BIOS, so it does not appear in WIndows Explorer or Device Manager. If I connect this D drive via USB, I can access all of my files and folders just fine.

Welcome to the forums!

Apologize if I'm not understanding correctly, but if you haven't tried connecting your 'new D drive' via USB to another computer (which I'm assuming is empty), you may want to check that too.
If the other computer doesn't see it either, you may need to partition and format it with Windows Disk Manager which you should also be able to do with your G73SW if the 'new D drive' is still installed there.
Partitioning and formatting with Disk Manager will erase all the drive data of course, so make sure there isn't anything on there you want to keep and that you select the correct drive.

Technomann2 wrote:

With the second G73SW laptop I recently cloned a copy of the System C drive and swapped it out. However on boot up I get the error message that there is no MBR to be found. If I reboot and tap the ESC key, I get a small BIOS-like screen where the new cloned C drive actually does appear. I can then select the new drive from the list and boot up into WIndows. If I enter the BIOS setup, however, the old C drive still appears and not the new one. No amount of manipulation in the BIOS seems to be able to change that.

I may need to see it to believe it or just don't remember how these older units work, but doesn't make any sense to me if your old C drive still appears in the bios when it's not physically installed in the unit if that is what you're saying.
Not sure how many drives you have installed for the second G73SW , but you may just want to remove all the drives to confirm the bios doesn't see any, and just install 1 drive first.

[Technomann2]

cl-Albert wrote:
Welcome to the forums!
I may need to see it to believe it or just don't remember how these older units work, but doesn't make any sense to me if your old C drive still appears in the bios when it's not physically installed in the unit if that is what you're saying.
Not sure how many drives you have installed for the second G73SW , but you may just want to remove all the drives to confirm the bios doesn't see any, and just install 1 drive first.

It doesn't make any sense to me either, yet I experience it on a daily basis. The old C drive still appears in the BIOS even tho it is no longer physically installed. The new C drive does not appear in the BIOS, unless I tap the ESC key on boot up. Then a small BIOS-like screen appears showing 3 drives: The old C drive; the D drive; and the new C drive. Only then can I select the new C drive and boot up into WIndows.

How do I fix this so that the BIOS will automatically select the new C drive???

[cl-Albert]

Technomann2 wrote:
It doesn't make any sense to me either, yet I experience it on a daily basis. The old C drive still appears in the BIOS even tho it is no longer physically installed. The new C drive does not appear in the BIOS, unless I tap the ESC key on boot up. Then a small BIOS-like screen appears showing 3 drives: The old C drive; the D drive; and the new C drive. Only then can I select the new C drive and boot up into WIndows.

How do I fix this so that the BIOS will automatically select the new C drive???

Unfortunately, never heard of this happening before, so don't have any good suggestions, but if your other G73SW isn't doing the same thing , a little worried there could just be something wrong with this G73SW and don't want to make things any worse trying to fix it (don't have any great ideas anyway)?

Not sure how safe this is to try, but wondering if your cloning software may have done something funny, so wanted to just remove your current C: drive to see if both C: drives disappear.
If you're a worrier like me though, wondering if your notebook may just stop recognizing drives altogether if you fool around with it too much.

If you think it could just be a cloning issue though, maybe this is something that can be checked more, but not thinking that this would interfere with the bios detection of the drives, so may not be worth pursuing.
Maybe your system just doesn't like your new C: drive if you want to install a different drive to see if the bios detects all the drives correctly.

Hopefully others have better ideas.

[Technomann2]

cl-Albert wrote:


Not sure how safe this is to try, but wondering if your cloning software may have done something funny, so wanted to just remove your current C: drive to see if both C: drives disappear.
If you're a worrier like me though, wondering if your notebook may just stop recognizing drives altogether if you fool around with it too much.

If you think it could just be a cloning issue though, maybe this is something that can be checked more, but not thinking that this would interfere with the bios detection of the drives, so may not be worth pursuing.
Maybe your system just doesn't like your new C: drive if you want to install a different drive to see if the bios detects all the drives correctly.

I took the cloned C drive out and installed the original C drive, and the problem persists! Now the laptop will not boot up into windows, will not recognize the original drive, and still gives the error message "Missing MBR". If I tap the ESC key while booting I get a little BIOS-like screen that does list all of the drives. I can then boot into Windows by selecting the proper drive. How could the BIOS get corrupted like this???

[JustinThyme]

Easy to use and Ive not had cloning issues ever is free version of Macrium reflect. I use Acronis true image for back up but Ive never had luck with their cloning tool.

free 30 day trial on right side of page

https://www.macrium.com/products/home