Hard Drive Vanished

Talbs13 · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:40

Hello There,

I seem to be having a very strange problem! Every now and then, one of my Hard Drives seems to dissapear from Disk Management & My Computer and Windows doesnt recognise a physical connection. It is definately connected as i have checked numerous times.

When i restart it all goes back to normal? The hard drive is the Seagate 7200.10 320. It is split into 2 partions. Its quite new, 3-4 months. Could it be a dodgy SATA cable?

Any ideas?

Thanks,

JamesT

mattbrown91 · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:42

Can it be seen in Disc Managment ?

Talbs13 · 7 Jan 2007 at 16:43

No. It is shown in the bios though. Also, the CD-ROM dissapears aswell! CD-ROM is a Asus DVD-RW.

Tony Williams · 7 Jan 2007 at 17:56

Try a different SATA port in your motherboard.

riddlermarc · 7 Jan 2007 at 19:45

Is this under XP or Vista? I have Vista installed (triple-boot) but I don't use it as half the time when I booted my SATA data drive wouldn't be found.. not a problem as the OS is on a different physical drive but it meant I couldn't access 200Gb of files, games etc.

I didn't get a resolution on it, despite a lot of searching and updates.. I'm hoping when Vista gets more mainstream driver support my problem will be solved..

this_is_gav · 8 Jan 2007 at 10:02

I had a 7200.10 (320GB too actually) that did this.

It disappeared from Windows, which set the alarm bells ringing - then it disappeared from the BIOS too (was on the Silicon Image controller), so I hooked it up to the ULi one and it reappeared again. In the end it stopped being detected altogether. It works in an IcyBox I've got though, either through USB or eSATA, so I just use it for transporting data back and forth and temporary media stuff.

Basically, the 7200.10 series suck - very fast, but of the 2 I've had, both have now failed, and I am not alone. This is Maxtor form.