Continual problems with disk drive...

[Haiku32]

Windows is no longer recognising the fact that I have a disk drive. Doesn't show up alongside hard drives in my computer, neither does it show up in device manager. Drive shows up in BIOS, LED and drive work so I assume the power and data cables are connected correctly. I've tried reseating all the cables as well as trying different sata ports on my motherboard yet I still have problems.

There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it working. Sometimes it will work for a week, then I'll boot up one day and it won't, then I'll reboot and it will work for another week. Other times it will just stop working for weeks at a time no matter how many times I reboot. There's no consistency so I'm finding it hard to troubleshoot the problem.

Any ideas as to why it just isn't being recognised randomly in Windows?

tl;dr sometimes drive works, other times it doesn't, how come?

[Lee H]

Have you tried a different SATA cable?

sometimes they do break and can cause issues as I've had issues myself which I thought was a drive failure and it turned out to be a cable issue.

[Haiku32]

I have tried different cables in the past, I'll try another one though just incase.

Don't know what steps I went through, but managed to get it showing up in device manager (still doesn't show up in My Computer though, and still doesn't read disks). Had a big yellow exclamation work next to it, and got told my problem was "Code 10." Searching the internet, this solution to this was to update the drivers. So I did so and it said my drivers were up to date. Still doesn't work though. I have the original disk that came with it, but I can't install the drivers since the drive doesn't work .

[CWH]

Hi,

You could always see if the drive manufacturer has some Utility tools to check the drive with. Most of them have a choice of tools, possibly a bootable disc would be the best choice as it would bypass the operating system.

Colin