Having a problem with a disappearing hard drive

[kill4killin]

Ok, so I really have no idea what's going on here with this...

I just got a 250GB SATAII drive to add to my computer. When I plugged it in the first thing I noticed was that it for some reason caused me to have duplicate of one of my IDE drives show up. After that, and a few weeks later I noticed that for some reason, the E: drive (the sata one) kept disappearing and only would re-appear under "my computer" or in the disk manager in windows after a re-boot and sometimes it wouldn't even show up then if I didn't boot into the BIOS first...for some reason though, if I boot into the BIOS and then windows it shows up just fine, only to then disappear again...I have no idea what's going on, anyone care to take a gander at what the problem could be?

I really need to know because I need to be able to use this drive, I just installed GTR Evolution on it and I'm also currently moving my big media files around in preparation for my hard drive upgrades so a lot of my movies and music and pictures are now on that drive...HELP!!!:scared:

[Patriot]

unstable OC?

IF you improperly shutdown vista too many times it needs to clean up the mess... repair the hard drives using windows tools.... error check your C first...

I was loosing my CD drive... also of course check the cable... and perhaps switch it out... sata cables are nice except for one thing... easy on easy off... they vibrate loose... thats why I bought locking cables...

[kill4killin]

Good suggestions!

I'm not OCing my machine right now, still at stock settings (well, at it again, not still) and I'm still running XP 32bit, haven't gone to Vista yet.

The funny part is is that I unplugged and re-plugged it again this last time and also check the bios and it's not there...I can't find it this time at all...I think the drive is actually dead...well, that's the first one the rest are next, I guess I need to get on those upgrades....

[Patriot]

Good suggestions!

I'm not OCing my machine right now, still at stock settings (well, at it again, not still) and I'm still running XP 32bit, haven't gone to Vista yet.

The funny part is is that I unplugged and re-plugged it again this last time and also check the bios and it's not there...I can't find it this time at all...I think the drive is actually dead...well, that's the first one the rest are next, I guess I need to get on those upgrades....

try a diff sata port....

[dekard]

Different port, cable and power connector... heck, try a different computer if you've got one.

[synaps3]

It sounds like you may have run out of drive numbers in Windows. Try manually assigning your drives letters, starting from Z:/ and working backwards. If you manually assign, you won't get overlaps when you plug in removable devices.

[Patriot]

It sounds like you may have run out of drive numbers in Windows. Try manually assigning your drives letters, starting from Z:/ and working backwards. If you manually assign, you won't get overlaps when you plug in removable devices.


good point ...forgot about that....

[trucker147]

I had a gigabyte board do that the south bridge failed, it would read only some drives and if you disabled the acpi they would show up but could't use a raid just single drives and at ide speeds only