Hard drive randomly appearrs and disappears...

B

behe387

New Member
I have a custom made computer that has been running well for about a year now. I currently have one SATA hard drive, and recently hooked up a new PATA hard drive. I set everything up correctly (at least I think so) and it was working for a while, then I shut down my computer for the evening and the next morning the new hard drive disappeared under “My Computer.” I did not change any settings or download any updates, but I did notice that a windows update was downloaded at startup. About a week later, I clicked on “My Computer” and the hard drive was there again! It has been randomly appearing and disappearing for the last month or so. The connections are tight, and there is no problem with wiring. I have also tried using a different PATA slot. It seems to be a theme that every once in a while when I receive a windows update, the hard drive will appear or disappear, but not every time. I recently looked in another forum that suggested me to increase my "boot delay time" in bios, I increased it from 0 to 5 with no results. Here are my computer specs:



Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Pentium 640 3.2 GHz processor

512 x 2 (1 Gigabyte) of Kingston Hyper-X RAM

Gigabyte GA-8I915P Duo (Rev 1.1) Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 915P ATX Intel Motherboard

BFG Tech GeForce 6800 256 mb PCI Express video card

Onboard sound C-Media 8.1

Plenty of fans, no overheating problems



Thanks,



Matt
 
try going in control panel under Administrative Tools, Computer Management and then in the list on the left click under Disk Management then locate the drive right click and make the disk online or Format the HD
 
Tried it, I actually used that to format my hard drive. Whenever the drive icon disappears from "My computer" it also disappears from everywhere, BIOS... Manage... the only way I can find it usually is by waiting for it to appear after a restart.
 
Behe, I have the same problem sometimes on mine. Except, its a dissappearing partition. My first 3 partitions never flicker (OS, Music, Movies), but the fourth partition (Misc/Software) will drop off the map for a day, then come back. Only does it very occasionally, Happily I don't store any important data on that partition.
 
its a pata HD right what have you set it to if you set it to master it should go in the middle ribbon cable if its set to slave it should go on the end of the ribbon cable and the other end goes on the mobo sorry mate that all the advice i can give you
 
Saurian, at least I'm not the only one out there... If you learn any way to fix this please let me know. I have moved all important data off of the disappearing hard drive, it's just a few video clips and songs now...

Robina, I've tried just about every possible combination of the jumper and the ribbon, but I'll try your suggestion, just in case. Thanks!
 
No luck yet, I did some testing, and it seems that roughly every one in three times I turn on my computer, the 2nd hard drive appears and is functional. The other two, it is nowhere to be seen. Any ideas?
 
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