Hey guys, I need some help pertaining to dissapearing drives. My friend's 10GB HD decided to dissapear from his computer, he's running WinXP service pack 2... and that's really all I know of his computer.
Anyway, besides the fact that the HD might have died on him what else could be the problem? Is there some kind of tool that'll search for the drive or something? :\
Never dealt with this before... Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Name:
Anonymous2005-11-17 14:27
this probably wont help but if you have lots of drives in a computer powered by a low-wattage PSU the power can and has been known to fail to some drives.
Name:
Anonymous2005-11-17 15:56
Does it disappear from the BIOS setup screen?
Open the PC up and listen to the drive when you turn the pc on-does the drive spin up?
Did you add any other devices that draws power?
Also, check out the disk manager to see if it hasn't been detected, but not assigned a drive letter. (control panel->administritive tools->computer management, and then click disk manager).
Name:
Anonymous2005-11-17 16:48
Had the exact same problem on my brother's machine, and two or three machines at work. It turned out in all these cases there was a loose wire in the power connector to the hard drive, which meant any vibration (footsteps, etc.) could jiggle the wire and cut the power to the drive. Pause the boot process (or go into the BIOS screen) and wiggle the power connector, and listen carefully to see if you hear the drive spin up or spin down.
Name:
Anonymous2005-11-17 20:20
>>2 >>3 >>4
Interesting, he did just add a wi-fi card to his computer so that might be it... I'll check and see, also I can't really tell if the drive is spinning because it's right next to his other drive... that works... You guys think I should try booting up just that drive? Crap... he doesn't have Windows installed on that drive though... Well, I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the help!
Name:
Anonymous2005-11-17 21:15
>>5
get a linux live CD for him (Knoppix, Slax). It came in very, very, very handy for when my WD drive started dying and doesn't require an HD or an OS.
You should try different IDE cables, that's what happened with mine a few times.