Okay, something weird has just happened. I got up this morning and noticed that one of my hard drives is missing. It抯 still there and plugged in. The BIOS shows that it is still there, but when I go into my computer, it isn抰 there.
Here抯 a little history. I built this computer a little over a year ago. I抦 running windows XP Pro with SP2. I抳e got the OS and most of my programs on a WD Raptor which is SATA. Then, I抳e got a 200 Gig WD SATA hard drive that I抳e got all my pictures and files on. This is the drive that抯 missing. I抳e also got another WD 200 Gig drive that抯 IDE that I have all my music on. This one is fine.
Here抯 what I抳e done so far. I抳e tried unplugging it and restarting the computer. I then plug it back in and restart again. No luck. I then tried re-adding the drive, but then the computer locks up. I抳e tried plugging it into another SATA slot and I抳e used another SATA cable with no luck.
Is my drive fried?
aramp1
It sounds like something in Windows itself may have been cooked. I hope you are not putting the WD Raptor on the master or secondary SATA along with the other drive. XP has a touchy problem at times with SATA drives and being able to even see them unless the drivers are in good.
A failed drive is always possible. But don't rule out a few other things even a fault that has come up with the board itself since you have tried using other cables. Hopefully it will be a simple resource sharing problem with XP. If you can someone else try the drive in another case and it shows up in Windows then you know it's software not hardware.
It sounds like something in Windows itself may have been cooked. I hope you are not putting the WD Raptor on the master or secondary SATA along with the other drive. XP has a touchy problem at times with SATA drives and being able to even see them unless the drivers are in good.
A failed drive is always possible. But don't rule out a few other things even a fault that has come up with the board itself since you have tried using other cables. Hopefully it will be a simple resource sharing problem with XP. If you can someone else try the drive in another case and it shows up in Windows then you know it's software not hardware.
No, the hard drive isn't the slave to the raptor. I've ruled out the board because I plugged another drive into the same slot and it worked fine. I haven't tried my hard drive in another computer yet, but I've got a feeling it will do the same thing. I'm probably going to end up sending it to one of those data recovery places. They're expensive, but I want my pictures. Like they say, "Education is expensive". I think I'm about to buy some. I should have backed everything up. I'm going to start.
check the partitions in disk management, make sure the partition wasnt accidentally deleted. thats the only reason i can think of that it would show up in the bios (which should let it show up in disk management) but not under my computer.
I'm going to harp here again. It's not Windows. That's just dumb. It's not the board. It's WD. They are famous for crap like this. That's why I hate them so much. They turf the MFT on them, or they go *click click click*. In this case I will bet it's the first one, especially considering as how the BIOS can detect it, but My Computer can't.
If you go into compmgmt.msc, you will probably see the drive sitting there, but with diagonal lines through it. If you do, that means I was right.
It doesn't show up under disk management. I can use the "add new hardware" function and (re)add it, but after I do, the computer locks up. I think I've basically narrowed it down to the drive being bad. It will still spin when I power the computer up, but it won't make any noise at all. I think that this will be the last western digital product I purchase.
You can pretty much count on that puppy being cooked, that's for sure.
Before you do anything though, give something a try. I don't think it will work, but you really should rule it out just in case. Check out the following link and follow the instructions:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/show_hid...ce_manager.htm (I really like that site).
Then go into the device manager and show hidden devices. You will see the drive show up in the list kind of faded.
Uninstall the device. Try and plug the drive back in and see what happens. It might work, you never know.
If it doesn't, take the piece of shit apart and cover it in shrink wrap so you can show all your buddies what an HDD looks like inside. I think I might have one around here myself somewhere. At least I used to have at least one.
It doesn't show up under disk management. I can use the "add new hardware" function and (re)add it, but after I do, the computer locks up. I think I've basically narrowed it down to the drive being bad. It will still spin when I power the computer up, but it won't make any noise at all. I think that this will be the last western digital product I purchase.
I wouldn't give up on WD and then go out and by some Maxtor piece of crap. You may see good results with a Seagate or IBM over those. I was forced to load out one good WD drive dual OSed some months back when XP couldn't see a 200gb SATA drive while it was clearly seen in the bios and post screen. A friend there never did anything about it. Have you tried it without the Raptor drive on the same controller to see if it works there? That would point at the board having a fault.
I wouldn't give up on WD and then go out and by some Maxtor piece of crap. You may see good results with a Seagate or IBM over those. I was forced to load out one good WD drive dual OSed some months back when XP couldn't see a 200gb SATA drive while it was clearly seen in the bios and post screen. A friend there never did anything about it. Have you tried it without the Raptor drive on the same controller to see if it works there? That would point at the board having a fault.
Quote:
Originally Posted by aramp1
Here抯 what I抳e done so far. I抳e tried unplugging it and restarting the computer. I then plug it back in and restart again. No luck. I then tried re-adding the drive, but then the computer locks up. I抳e tried plugging it into another SATA slot and I抳e used another SATA cable with no luck.
When you buy yourself a set of glasses you can come back and read that he's already tried another drive... If the BIOS sees it, it's not the mobo obviously.
Aramp1: By the way, WD really is nothing but shit. I've said it many times before in this forum. Since 1999 when I was a Western Digital Authorized Reseller until present I have seen TONS of WD. I figure I have gone through over 1000 harddrives total in that time period. I have lost more WD than any other brand other than Fujitsu. They are even worse than Connor for reliability (I don't know if you remember them). I have seen a failure rate of roughly 30%. Terrible. The Caviar and the Caviar SE are absolute crap. The Raptor is really nice, and the Caviar RE is an enterprise drive... But other than that I would stay the hell away from them unless you are using them for casual usage only. They just can't take the pressure.
The drives I have had good luck with are Seagate, Maxtor (except for three models in the early 2000's. If you need the model numbers let me know), Samsung and some Hitachis. IBM makes a few good ones too.
