2nd Hard drive disappeared

[Socko]

A few weeks ago, my second hard drive suddenly disappeared, for no apparent reason. My primary one still shows up. I checked all the cables and such, it replugged em all in (the 2 hds have been on the same ide cable since i put them in) in device manager the driver for it (Maxtor) shows up and it says that its working fine, but its not showing up in explorer/etc... and i cant get to it, also, when the computer boots up it only shows my first hd not the second (not detected like the secondary 2) and in the BIOS, where i can normally select Auto detect for that, its none, unlike the first hd

please help me

 

[dreamliner77]

Not to sound like an idiot, but have you looked to see if the drive is visible under Administrative Tools>Disk Management?

 

[Rigsta]

You could try manually setting it in the BIOS and see if that helps... the config should be saved ready for selecting. Did you check the jumpers on the second HDD? I know it's not very likely but the jumper could have fallen out and left the HDD on master or cable select mode...

 

[Socko]

Its not visible under disk management, and when I replugged in the cables, the jumpers were all fine

thanks for the quick replies though

 

[Bytes Back]

Well, if the BIOS can't see it then theres not much chance windows will.

Have you tried it on its own with no other drives attached. Until you get the bios seeing it you'll go no further.

 

[CeReAl]

do you have a controller card??

 

[Socko]

I think so, I have a Primary IDE Controller, Secondary IDE Controller & a VIA Bus Master IDE Controller

also theres a WinXP Promise Ultra100 IDE Controller

 

[ICEMAN1967]

I have a simular problem I looked for this.

Not to sound like an idiot, but have you looked to see if the drive is visible under Administrative Tools>Disk Management?


The drive is listed there. and is heathy and active, but in My Computer it only show the the 1st harddrive and cd/ dvd roms the 2nd hard drive has no drive letter visible in the disk management area. any help would be great

 

[LeeJend]

Iceman1967
If it is a drive you have used before and it shows up in bios but not in windows make sure you have formated it and partitioned it.

Socko
Make sure it is spinning, if not connect it to another power plug from the Power Supply.
Connect it to the another connector on the existing cable.
Try another IDE cable.
Try it on the other ide port.

If none of those work have a friend try it in their computer.

If that doesn't work then the drive is probably dead (or you are mis-reading the jumper selections on the back of the drive).

Some of the older Western Digital drives had the jumper setting label on upside down. It read correctly if you were reading it from the front and above, but was backwards if you were reading it from the rear.