My slave hard drive is not recognize by my computer anymore

[hardwareman]

Hello. I need some good advice and tips on how to solve a serious problem that started today. I have two hard drives: master( where the OS is installed) and slave. I don't know how happened, my computer just ceased recognizing the slave hard drive. My master drive works well yet.
Each time I boot my pc, only the master drive appears as installed, and the slave doesn't.

 

[gguerra]

I would check the BIOS and not even bother with the OS. Once it is recgnized in the BIOS you are good to go.. We need more information. Are they SATA or IDE. If IDE how do you have them hooked up? On one single IDE port with one cable or two separate ports.. We need more info in order to help you.

 

[hardwareman]

They are IDE. Well, the master hard drive and the CD ROM drive are connected to the primary IDE cable. They work with no problem. And the slave hard drive was connected to the secondary IDE cable and it worked pretty well until yesterday. Each time I boot and then I enter to the BIOS settings, and the slave hard drive is not there, that's weird. I load optimal values and save then exit, and then it boots again from the beggining, the message I get is "No 80 conector cable installed"

 

[hardwareman]

I'm afraid the slave hard drive got damaged. Are there softwares or programs that damage the hard drive?
In case it is damaged, is there at least a way to recover most of the data?

 

[gguerra]

Dont give up quite yet. when you turn on the PC touch the drive to see if it is spinning. If it is not then it may not be getting power. Try another IDE cable and/or another power connection. As for the jumpers it should not have changed but try master or single or no jumper at all. Do some basic troubleshooting before you give up. Remember if it is not in BIOS it wont show up in OS so you dont have to boot it up each time.

 

[fastvince]

Sounds like the slave drive is bad. If you did not change the jumpers, or move the drives into different conectors if using cable select, not much else it could be.