Hard Drive Trouble

D

Dean

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Howzit all

For the past while I've been having this problem with my hard drive.. it used to work perfectly, until one day it just stopped.

I run a 160GB Seagate as primary master, and a 60GB Seagate as primary slave (both internal). 160 has Win XP SP2 and 60GB is just a media storage drive.

My BIOS detects both hdds correctly, as always, but as soon as Windows boots up, there's no sign of the 60GB. Nothing about it in Device Manager or (Windows) Disk Management, which leads me to believe that Windows, somehow, doesn't detect it at all.

Could anyone shed some light on the matter?

Much appreciated!

- Dean
 
Plug the hard drive out and plug it back in. When you turn your pc on feel if the drive is spinning. Have a look in your bios if it picks it up
 
Unplugged and plugged a few times now... as I said, BIOS is detecting it 100% perfectly - Name, Size, etc. but to Windows, it doesn't exist :-/
 
Wierd coz even it was a unrecognized partition it would've still showed in disk management
 
u must check with app to fix it. windows can mark partitions and disks as faulty and basically disable them. I'm sure if u use partition magic u will see its still 'there' . i'm just not sure how u gonna get it back.
 
Nothing about it in Partition Magic :/ Still unresolved...
 
Hard-Drive could be dead but since Windows doesn't report anything you should download Seagate Seatools for Dos Here

As long as the drive is correctly configured correctly in the BIOS it is supposed to show up in Seatools if it doesn't my bet would be that the drive is dead. Perhaps you could also test it in another PC?
 
try turning it off in bios and see if windows detects it?
 
sach70 said:
http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=64927, it might shed some light on your problem. It solved mine.
Click to expand...

Won't work since the drive isn't even showing up in the Device Manager nor Disk Management. Meaning Windows isn't even aware of the drive and therefore software running in Windows won't be either. Even when a drive isn't even configured in the BIOS Windows still detects and installs the drive so there's a good chance it's dead.
 
Howzit

As Gnome advised, I downloaded and ran (bootable) Seatools and ran both the short and long tests on the drive - and funnily enough it passed both.

I somehow still think there's hope...

Any other suggestions?

Thanks a lot for the help so far, everyone...
 
Well that means the drive is in working order.

Did you try it in another PC?

Also are you sure both IDE channels are activated in the BIOS (slim chance that their not but still)?

Are you sure all jumpers on ALL IDE devices are correct (they should be since the BIOS has no problems but just to be sure...)? If you're unsure set ALL jumpers to cable select.

Finally, you're sure the drive isn't AT ALL showing up in the device manager?
 
Problem Closed

Hi again

They've been on Cable Select since I got them. Tried it in another computer, and the same thing happened.

I then tried, for sh1ts and giggles, to set the jumper to Slave, and it detected the same way in the BIOS, and everything was the same... except that it suddenly appeared in My Computer as if it had always been there.

Thanks a lot for all your efforts everyone... MUCH appreciated!

-PROBLEM RESOLVED-
 
Strange though that it worked for so many months on Cable Select and then decided to stop suddenly one day... Oh well.
 
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