Windows Lost My Hard Drive?

[lightshow]

Hello everyone.

I just had one of my hard drives die. I wake up in the morning to see the message
"Delay write failed" from Windows XP (I have system restore on).

So I check my E: hard drive (120 GB Maxtor NTFS Formatted) and I got this message:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/4...essibleox7.jpg

I noticed that the name I gave my drive (Aria) is now gone and it is called Local Disk

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/3262/image1yx8.jpg

So I right click the drive and check its properties.. it is now RAW
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3169/image2gr9.jpg

So I think, great, now I'm going to have to re-format it. So I open up the computer
management thing in Admin Tools in XP

http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/401...tnotlisth8.jpg

But I find that it doesn't even detect the hard drive...hmm
Based on other hard drives that fail I can usually see them here and just re-format the thing, but it
doesn't even show up.


So I turned off the computer and checked the physcial connection and it is fine.

So why does it show up in my computer as a drive, but not in computer management.


When I get some time, I'm going to pull it out, put it in a usb enclosure and try to see
if I can get it detected that way.

I need to get a ntfs recovery piece of software before I format it again though.



My question to you guys/girls is why did it show up in my computer, but not the
computer management control panel?

[clocker]

My question to you guys/girls is why did it show up in my computer, but not the
computer management control panel?

Who knows...Windows is stupid.
Reboot, go to the Add Hardware applet in Device Manager and see if you can initialize the disk from there.
Is this drive IDE or SATA?

[khurios2000]

last time my drive missing it was the bad cable.

[lightshow]

So I took the drive out and put it in a usb enclosure. Drive is IDE

I hooked it up and plugged it into my machine.



I get the error that it won't start the device.

So that means that my hard drive won't spin up. Does that mean it's totally dead? Any other ideas?

Think I should try getting Partition Magic and see if that will see it as a drive?

[clocker]

So that means that my hard drive won't spin up. Does that mean it's totally dead? Any other ideas?

Think I should try getting Partition Magic and see if that will see it as a drive?
Don't bother.

At this point your easiest and most definitive test would be to slave the drive into another known good PC and see what happened.
If it still refuses to cooperate, the drive is dead.
After a short period of mourning, replace the bastard.

[lightshow]

Your right. I just placed an order for a new 250GB drive that I found a deal on.

It's going to be sad to see it go though. Sadly that one little square magnetic box held all my music and some other personal data.

I'll give it a proper funeral...I know I have a large magnet and a sledge hammer in the basement...

goodbye...my friend...

my dear aria...

[Virtualbody1234]

What drive did you choose?

[lightshow]

I got a Western Digital 250 GB SataII

Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB Serial ATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive

Though I don't blame the drive for failing. It has had really heavy use in the past. Like going from half full to full and back and forth for many months.