Windows does not see harddrive

T

tomstat

New Member
I have an OEM system w/a Prescott 800 DDR400 motherboard equipped w 768MB mem, a pair of Maxtor harddrives (40GB & 30GB respectively) & a pair of DVD burners (an OEM & an Acer). About a month ago the secondary harddrive disappeared from Windows. No configuration changes have been made to either the hardware or software.

Primary IDE channel
HDD0 - logical C:
DVD0 - logical D:

Secondary IDE channel
DVD1 - logical E:
HDD1 - logical F:

All connections are secure, cables are a couple years old at most & were bought for this system (Scorpio Ultra ATA133 IDE on both channels)

The HD is still visible at the BIOS level, still properly configured.

There are no events logged in the event viewer that even refer to that HD.

The drive simply doesn't exist when looking at the drive arrangement either via a command prompt, my computer, computer management, or the device manager.

The estimate of disappearing a month ago is simply that, an estimate. I never use the drive unless copying DVDs or CDs, it's simply a big fat buffer.

I don't routinely install new software on the machine, the image is a standard "work at home" with some applications, games, and utilities. I recently joined it to a domain following a DC crash, but I don't see how this is related to that.

Any help is appreciated.
 
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Are you overclocking the system? Sometimes if you over-extend the frequency I/O can be stuffed, including random formatting errors and drives disappearing.
 
When having two ide hard drives on a system that are both above ATA33 you will want them both on the primary ide cable. Since those are both Maxtor drives you will want set as master and slave. Once you correct that WIndows should prompt with the new hardware or device found message. If you don't see that or want to correct the present setup go into the device manager and look under "disk drives".

Right click on the drive you have on the secondary ide cable and choose the uninstall option followed by restarting the system. Windows will prompt about finding it with the icon seen on the taskbar. You simply right on that to have Window seatch for the drivers. Windows will then install the default included.
 
Hmmmm... oddly enough, reconfiguring the HDDs both to the primary IDE worked, although I'm not sure why. The drive was visible for well over a year since install, but swapping it around brought it back.

Thanks!
 
elitehacker said:
Are you overclocking the system? Sometimes if you over-extend the frequency I/O can be stuffed, including random formatting errors and drives disappearing.
Click to expand...
Nope, I don't overclock. But the problem has been corrected so everything is fine and dandy, thanks for your input!
 
You should notice some improvement in performance since having any ATA33 deivce on the primary will put a drag on the faster ATA100 host drive. With both slower optical on the secondary it also simplifies the cable arrangement when going to replace a drive that goes doa or upgrade.

Here's another tip in case the drive disappears again. Go into the device manager and look in the "disk drives" section for the effected drive. Simply right click on it and choose the uninstall option. Once you exit and restart the system Windows will prompt with the usual "new hardware found" message and show the icon for this in the system tray. Right click on that to have Windows search for the drivers. Windows will then install it's own ide drivers it comes with.

You may have to reboot again if running XP Home. For some reason XP Pro simply installs it and immediately shows the drive in MyComputer and Windows Explorer which is already tied in.
 
Thanks for the tip, hopefully I won't have to use it, but I've stuck a post-it on the back of the CPU just in case :D

I'm running XP Pro SP1. You know, of all the bits of information to omit from my original post :rolleyes:
 
Well if you plan to update your XP installation there to SP2 you don't have to wait inline at Microsoft. My first XP disk was an SP1 deal there. The fast way to get SP2 is to download the full 266mb service pack directly to a folder on the drive. This way you can install it when you want to. I even backed it up on removable in the event the drive was reformatted for some reason.

SP2 can be downloaded in the full redistributable download at http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/Windows-XP-SP2-RTM.shtml
 
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