Results 1 to 7 of 7

Thread: Help My HDD has disappeared

  1. #1
    Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    181
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked
    0 times in 0 posts

    Help My HDD has disappeared

    Hi

    I was wondering if someone could help please

    I have two sata HDD in my PC (not in Raid). The C: drive is my main drive and has all programs on. The second is my media drive and is where I store music and movies etc. I have XP Home.

    Both HDD have been in and working fine since November 06.

    I turned my PC on today and the 2nd HDD has disappeared. I tried a restart but that didnt work. It doesnt show up in device manager at all.

    Over the last few days it has been a bit sluggish in responding and the pc crashed a few times when accessing the 2nd drive.

    Does anyone have any ideas as I have no clue.

    Please and Thank you.

  2. #2
    Member
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Reading
    Posts
    76
    Thanks
    2
    Thanked
    1 time in 1 post
    That doesn't sound good. I presume you have it backed-up?

    I had this same issue on my 2nd hard drive on my old rig (ATA though) - I went through the whole process of changing cables, re-seating cables, ensuring that power was correctly connected, wandering through the bios. Virus checks, spybots, trojan, hijack this scan etc - nothing. Sometimes it would show, sometimes not. In the end I could not find a reason why this was happening, so I removed the drive from the case, attatched it to a spare USB box I have, replaced the internal drive with a new one and copied the contents across (the drive could be seen through the USB...go figure!) I had a back up of the hard drive on another USB box anyway

    I made the assumption that the drive was on its way out and with the cost of hard drives being what they are it wasn't worth the anxiety that if it would eventually fail - just the certainty that it would. Once replaced, problem solved..

    My suggestion - make sure your mobo is up to date with bios and chipset, re-seat your RAM, check out the cables and power supply and back it up if you can NOW (if not already done so,) using a USB caddy, and plan on replacing the hard drive immediately. The pain of total data loss is not worth the hassle.

    On another point with drives getting so big @ 1TB, back-up strategies become even more important - but how to cope with those sort of sizes? Sure RAID 1 or software such as Acronis will help but for the un-educated buying a computer from PC World with a 300-500GB hard drive onto which they put all their photos, movies, documents and everything else - its a disaster waiting to happen..
    Last edited by gha128; 04-07-2007 at 09:17 AM.

  3. #3
    The LHC rulez! DataMatrix's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Liverpool
    Posts
    511
    Thanks
    21
    Thanked
    10 times in 10 posts
    Yeah, it sounds like a lose cable. Just disconnect all the cables to the HDD in question and reconnect them.

  4. #4
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Leeds
    Posts
    2,599
    Thanks
    81
    Thanked
    106 times in 94 posts
    Sounds like its dead/dying to me. Does the HDD show up in the BIOS?

  5. #5
    No-one's Fanboi Thorsson's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    Neverneverland
    Posts
    2,750
    Thanks
    47
    Thanked
    93 times in 92 posts
    • Thorsson's system
      • Motherboard:
      • ASUS P8Z77-V PRO
      • CPU:
      • i5 3570k
      • Memory:
      • 2x8Gb Corsair Vengeance PC1866
      • Storage:
      • 256M4 SSD; 2Tb 7200RPM Barracuda; 2Tb Linkstation
      • Graphics card(s):
      • EVGA GTX970 SC
      • PSU:
      • Corsair HX650
      • Case:
      • Antec 300
      • Operating System:
      • Win10 64
      • Monitor(s):
      • Dell 2515H
      • Internet:
      • Fibre Optic 30Mb
    To expand on the above, if it shows up fine in the BIOS then it's something in Windows, possibly malware. If it doesn't then either it's the drive, the cable, or just possibly the motherboard. To discount the last two, change the cable and change the mobo header.

  6. #6
    The King of Vague Steve B's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Glasgow
    Posts
    5,051
    Thanks
    116
    Thanked
    67 times in 63 posts
    also, if you can, try to touch the drive. if its getting hot, it means its spinning up and could be working. if its stone cold, its dead.

  7. #7
    its all clear now
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    1,251
    Thanks
    60
    Thanked
    19 times in 17 posts
    • No.72's system
      • Motherboard:
      • commando
      • CPU:
      • e6300 3.50ghz artic 7
      • Memory:
      • 4gb corsair red tracers
      • Storage:
      • 320gb RAID0
      • Graphics card(s):
      • 4870XT
      • PSU:
      • 620 watt corsair
      • Case:
      • coolmaster 831 SE orange
      • Monitor(s):
      • 2407WFP AO4
      • Internet:
      • 10 meg virgin
    I had the same issue, it occured when I was playing cod2. The game froze and I had to re boot, I came into BIOS screen and it said RAID5 not bootable! even though it was a RAID0 , and it said I only had one HDD. I reset the cmos and that did the trick.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. External HDD enclosure causing nasty static noise
    By Jez in forum PC Hardware and Components
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 30-10-2007, 12:16 AM
  2. HDD custom enclosure
    By masterkeith in forum Help! Quick Relief From Tech Headaches
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 07-04-2007, 02:35 AM
  3. Misco - Ultra HDD enclosure and 250GB HDD deal
    By MD in forum Retail Therapy and Bargains
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 30-09-2005, 10:20 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •