Secondary H/D vanished

[Prosty]

Hey everybody, I'm having a little bit o' trouble. My secondary drive ("D" Drive) disappeared--sort of.

Heres a somewhat detailed description of what happened:

A few days ago I logged onto my computer, everything was normal. I decide to play Star Wars Galaxies for the first time in 5 months (a game located on my D drive, the one with the problem). In case you probably don't know, almost everytime you log into play this game, it manually starts to download new patches, hotfixes, etc. Well since I hadn't played the game in 5 months, I had a lot of updates to get. After a little while it finishes downloading, but still wont let me in game. So I restart the game, and try again. This time, it freezes my computer and I have to pull the plug. I restart my computer, try to open SWG, and once again it freezes and I'm forced to pull the plug.

This time, however, when my computer is restarting it starts telling me that my secondary drive cant be located. So I go into the BIOS, and sure enough my secondary drive isn't shown in it. So after Windows starts up, I go to My Computer to see if it my still be shown under hard drives. Its not there. Only my C drive. My first thought is that its fried.

So I go to Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Disk Drives, and low and behold, my secondary drive is still listed in there.

So at this point, I'm a little more relaxed knowing that my secondary drive, my favorite drive with all my games, pictures, programs, etc., has not exploded. But I still have no idea how to get it back!

Anyone have any idea what might be the problem? Could it be wiring? I would be incredibly grateful for any information leading to the return of my beloved D drive!

 

[Nodsu]

Do you actually have two physical hard drives in your computer or have you split your single hard drive into two partitions?

 

[Prosty]

There are two harddrives.

A Maxtor 20 gig (C drive)
A Maxtor 60 gig (D drive)

The 60 gig is the one I'm having trouble with.

 

[Nodsu]

Open up your computer and go over the hard drive data and power cables - if you are in luck then a bad connection is the culprit.

When you start up your computer, can you hear the second drive spinning up? Your power supply may be too weak to spin up two hard drives maiking the 60GB one give up and power down again. Try disconncting all other hard drives and CD-ROM and see if the pesky drive gets detected when alone.

Put the secondary hard drive on another IDE channel and see if it is detected. Download the Maxblast utility from Maxtor to run diagnostics (although it probably won't work if BIOS can't find the drive).

 

[luvhuffer]

Have you tried system restore? Is the D drive showing in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller/primary IDE/? Is it showing in UDMA mode? Do you have a way to check your voltage from your PSU?

 

[Prosty]

Ok, so I took a closer look at my secondary hard drive. When I turn on my computer, I can hear the secondary hard drive powered on, but the disk inside of it sort of makes a ticking sound, like its trying to spin but can't.

Any ideas?


edit. I'm sorry luvhuffer, but I dont know all that much about the inner workings of a computer. I dont know what IDE and all that stuff is =(

 

[luvhuffer]

That's OK Prosty. When a hard drive starts clicking, it's not usually a good thing. I would want to back up any data on that drive. Is there another computer you can try it on?

Also lets check another things. Go to www.lavalys.com and download Everest Home (freeware). Open the program and in the right side pane click on computer then sensor. Look at your voltages. There are 3 you need to be concerned with. +12V runs the motors on your drives. +5V runs the electronics. VBAT battery is your CMOS battery. If that is weak it can cause the BIOS to stop seeing components. It is the big flat silver battery and it is a 3.3V. The 12 and 5 run off your power supply. Those and all the other values should be within 10% at the outside, but preferably within a 5% tolerance. Don't concern yourself with the DIMM (memory slot) voltage or AGP voltage.

Go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore. When it opens click on Restore My Computer to an earlier time. You will see a calendar. Some of the days will be bolder. Click on a date before you did the star wars updates. Preferably one hat says System Checkpoint. Highlight the checkpoint in the right window. Hit next and follow the prompts. When you reboot, there will be a bit of a longer wait that usual as it resets the computer to how it was on that day. Hopefully, that will fix your drive problem. Then if I was you I might want to turn off the auto update on the game and install the updates and patches manually. By the way did you check the game site for any clues as to the problem? Sometimes the updates/patches go wrong and they have to post a fix that patches the patch that patched the update. <g>