D: disappeared!

A

awp

Suspended / Banned
Messages
7,105
Name
Andrew
Edit My Images
No
Working at my main computer today - I found the D: drive just was not there! I rebooted to no effect. Powered down for two hours and up again and it was there! Any idea why this would have happened? The computer is normally on 24 hours a day and never had anything like this before. Is the drive failing - or some other reason? I was using it yesterday with no apparent problems - everything was normal.
 
Is your D: drive ..

a) An optical drive
b) A separate magnetic drive
c) A partition on your main drive
 
I would get whatever is on it backed up ASAP and look at replacing the drive.

Disks are cheap now, so bette safe than sorry
 
it's an internal 500GB SATA drive - trouble free till today - furiously backing everything up overnight now.
 
There should never be a need to "furiously backup".
Get more than 1 drive and setup a simple backup routine.
 
When you've backed it up ( and set up a regular backup to 2 external drives ) check the connections to it. I've had a SATA drive doing something similar and it turned out to be just a bad cable. replaced that with a good cable and no more issues in last 18 months.
 
awp said:
it's an internal 500GB SATA drive - trouble free till today - furiously backing everything up overnight now.
Click to expand...

Right, now we know what it is.

First job is to stop the computer as the bios screen goes past or jump into the bios..... Does the drive appear there ???

Which version of Windows are you running? - Is it current enough to have "Disk Management"? - If so does the drive appear there?

Pop the side off and check the connections, there should be two connections to the drive power and data. Follow the data cable to the motherboard. If the connections LOOK ok the pull off the leads and push them back on. Then reboot.

The backing up of your current drive is all well and good but irrelevant to the other drive which is a separate thing anyway - still worth doing though.
 
cowasaki said:
The backing up of your current drive is all well and good but irrelevant to the other drive which is a separate thing anyway - still worth doing though.
Click to expand...

Think you missed the bit where it came back after a 2 hour shut down. ;)
 
I do back stuff up regularly and my pictures are not on the disk in question. I've now backed up the entire D: drive overnight - and all is well this morning. Later I will look at the connections and check your recommendations above. It did show in the BIOS but not in Disk Management - although it is there OK now - and it is showing as healthy with 64% free! I'm running Windows XP Pro service pack 3.
 
neil_g said:
Is start with checking the connection, SATA cables are amazingly flimsey
Click to expand...

Yep, had the exact same issue while flashing a 360 recently. I must of nudged the primary HDD sata cable so it wouldn't start at all :(
 
Strange thing is this computer hasn't been touched - not physically moved or anything - still working OK! :)
 
Maybe it just fancied a rest...
 
awp said:
Strange thing is this computer hasn't been touched - not physically moved or anything - still working OK! :)
Click to expand...

Yes but connectors and anything else plugged into computers can suffer issues due to heating up and cooling down cycles leading to bad connections. As said above, It's worth checking all the plugs etc are seated correctly before junking the drive. There might be nowt wrong with it. The couple of hours cooling down may have altered the plug position just enough.
Good luck.
:)
 
Everything looked OK - unplugged - re-plugged the D drive - everything still OK. I'll just keep an eye on it and keep that backup going nightly. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top