HD Disappear?

Dear Readers,

This is the strangest thing ever... Ok I just recently Formatted my Computer(6 TIMES) because for some reason everytime it would end up crashing.. But after the 7th... everything was A O K... After I updated and instlaled everything... Then after a few hours of just tweaking around with the Registry(Safe Tweaks that I grew up using){So this cannot be the problem}. But then after I installed a few programs and then restarted my computer... My Secondary HD doesn't show up anymore...

My main HD is a 80GB SATA, while my Secondary is a 300GB (REgular/Slow)IDE... And it shows up regularly before the restart... And in the past.. when this happened, I formatted.. therefore I had over 5 formats... But I am sick and tired of formatting.. so is there any way that I can get my HD back to be displayed WITHOUT having to reformat again? (Incase it is of any help... The HD didn't come with any CD's or anything =/, bought it OEM.

If you need further information do let me know, thank you.

SATA HD: 80GB Western Digital (Unsure of the specifics to this)
IDE: Seagate ST3300831A 300GB 7200RPM 8MB IDE (I think that is the info)

possibly check your bios and make sure that after the recent format you did on it, that it is being seen. Just make sure its listed in the bios, probably as a secondary ide (could be primary IDE). I had this happen before when using sata and ide at the same time. My sata shows up as a third master and the others are first and second even tho my sata is the OS drive, go figure, works fine tho :) and your sata drive is prolly the same drive I have a st380817s or some close variation (unimpotant really). It has to be the bios unless the drive is dead.

If youv'e reinstalled XP you may have to go into Disk Manager to get it recognised by XP.

Does the drive show up in the Device Manager?

My drive doesn't appear there... And that is the strange part because it isn't like I moved any of the cables or anything because it worked fine for a good 2 months... And I do not want to format it because I have a LOT of stuff on it and cannot back them up due to size conflicts... And I really do not want to resort to yet another format =/

Doesn't show up in Device Manager.

(Also it does not present itself in the BIOS/Boot-Up. And yeah I mean it when it did work, it showed up as a Primary, and that is how I have it set up ... My SATA is the Primary(With OS) while the 300 is backup, so I can't format that sicne I haven't backed up those things...)

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(Also it does not present itself in the BIOS/Boot-Up.

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Ok. Please don't reformat. That won't solve the problem.

The drive cannot show up in windows when it isn't even detected in the BIOS.

Check the cables in your PC to be sure you have a good connection to the drive. Both data cables and power cables need to be checked.

Restart into the BIOS and see if it's detected. Some BIOS versions have "detect drive" function. Try that.

One other thing to check in the BIOS is whether the SATA controller is enabled or not. Be sure that it's enabled.

Hmmm good stuff... But let's see it is fine that the HD is set to 'Cable Select' right? And I shall try 'replugging' the cables again after I check a few other things.. As for that SATA Controller.. I will have to get back to you on that.. And there is a thing in my BIOS labeled I think... something about RAID Controller and only the First is Enabled while all the other RAID relevance is Disabled.. I shall repost specifics when I check.

Edit: Problem FIXED, it seems that on the IDE Cable... I had to plug the END of it into the HD, it was plugged in through the Middle plug rather then the end.

Thanks for your help guys.

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Originally Posted by LilAznAccommodator

Hmmm good stuff... But let's see it is fine that the HD is set to 'Cable Select' right? And I shall try 'replugging' the cables again after I check a few other things.. As for that SATA Controller.. I will have to get back to you on that.. And there is a thing in my BIOS labeled I think... something about RAID Controller and only the First is Enabled while all the other RAID relevance is Disabled.. I shall repost specifics when I check.

Edit: Problem FIXED, it seems that on the IDE Cable... I had to plug the END of it into the HD, it was plugged in through the Middle plug rather then the end.

Thanks for your help guys.

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And that is the strange part because it isn't like I moved any of the cables or anything because it worked fine for a good 2 months

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Good job you hadn't moved any of the cables or anything then. That could have been really confusing. :ermm: