Way OT:- Missing hard drive. Please help!

SK
Posted By
Shan_Ko
Dec 2, 2003
Views
569
Replies
26
Status
Closed
Somewhere in the process of deleting old/already archived data files, I lost a secondary HD. It should still be inside my puter physically. Only I cannot access it and the secondary, Drive F, is no longer visible on the "tree" when I opened the Windows Explorer.

After the initial shock, I went looking in the Recycle Bin. The Drive F was not among the deleted files. Then, I did several System Restores going successively backwards. Still no Drive F.

The puter runs Windows XP Home. Since I am not computer savy, I had the secondary drive installed by CompUSA, and had been fine all along since last June. Up till now, everything else remain working including the DVD-R, CD-RW, primary Drive C, the Zip and card reader. they are all present and correct in Windows Explorer.

My drive C (80 MB) holds all programe files. The missing Drive F (200 GB) holds all data, including work-in-progress and unfortunately a lot of image files that I had not gotten around to archiving them. Dang! 🙁

Being computer illiterate, I have no explanation for this strange phenomenon other than gremlins at work. :p I would be grateful of any help to recover the use of the drive from its mysterious disappearance.

Shan

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

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– 12 scenes

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RC
Richard_Coencas
Dec 2, 2003
Hi Shan,

I would suggest getting someone to help you. At the very least you will probably need to check some BIOS settings and if you are not comfortable doing that type of thing yourself it can be intimidating.

Rich
MM
Mac_McDougald
Dec 2, 2003
Has it possibly switched drive designation?
Meaning, maybe it is now D: E: G: or somesuch?

When you have numerous drives, like with card readers, external HD’s, whatever, it’s possible for the letters to become reassigned.

Try opening ALL your lettered drive designations to check.

Mac
J
jhjl1
Dec 2, 2003
Shan go to your start button and follow these steps.
Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Click on Device Manager in the left column>In the right you will see a list of items. Is your hard drive listed? Does it have a yellow exclamation point beside it?


Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 3, 2003
Richard,

I may just have to get someone knowledgeable to give hands on help as you suggested, if there is no simple solution that I can click the mouse a couple of time to restore the missing drive. Thanks.

Mac,

I did open all the designated alphabets for the floppy, CDR-ROM, DVD and Zip drives, including one for the card reader. None of these lead me to the missing drive F. Thanks

James,

Following your advice, I have the Device Manager open in front of me, but I don’t see any hard drive listed on the righthand side, even the (still in business) Drive C. The righthand list is topped by Computer, followed by Disk drives, DVD/CD-ROM drives,keyboards, Mice and other pointing devices, Monitors, Ports, Processors. In between these are a bunch of adapters, controllers, and something called Human Interface Devices (whatever they are). No exclamation marks that I can see either. Thanks.

Shan
J
jhjl1
Dec 3, 2003
Shan wrote:
Following your advice, I have the Device Manager open in front of me, but I don’t see any hard drive listed on the right-hand side, even the (still in business) Drive C. The right-hand list is topped by Computer, followed by Disk drives,

James Replies:
Left click on the small arrow to the left of "Disc Drives" and see if your drive shows up. If it does, double click on it. You should now see a tab for troubleshoot. Click on troubleshoot and follow directions.

Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview
JW
Jim Wall
Dec 3, 2003
Sounds more to me like the bios lost the drive, not the operating system.

wrote in message
Shan wrote:
Following your advice, I have the Device Manager open in front of me, but I don’t see any hard drive listed on the right-hand side, even the (still in business) Drive C. The right-hand list is topped by Computer, followed by Disk drives,

James Replies:
Left click on the small arrow to the left of "Disc Drives" and see if your drive shows up. If it does, double click on it. You should now see a tab for troubleshoot. Click on troubleshoot and follow directions.

Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview

R
Redmonite
Dec 3, 2003
When something like this happens it’s always prudent to suspect a virus. However, I’d throw my vote towards a BIOS and/or boot record problem. If you have a bootable floppy try booting from it to see if the drive is available from the DOS prompt. Don’t know if you can make a bootable floppy from XP – my bootables are all old Win95 floppies. If you can see it from the floppy then a BIOS problem is possible.

Just a thought – could the drive cable and/or power connector be loose?

wrote in message
Somewhere in the process of deleting old/already archived data files, I
lost a secondary HD. It should still be inside my puter physically. Only I cannot access it and the secondary, Drive F, is no longer visible on the "tree" when I opened the Windows Explorer.
After the initial shock, I went looking in the Recycle Bin. The Drive F
was not among the deleted files. Then, I did several System Restores going successively backwards. Still no Drive F.
The puter runs Windows XP Home. Since I am not computer savy, I had the
secondary drive installed by CompUSA, and had been fine all along since last June. Up till now, everything else remain working including the DVD-R, CD-RW, primary Drive C, the Zip and card reader. they are all present and correct in Windows Explorer.
My drive C (80 MB) holds all programe files. The missing Drive F (200 GB)
holds all data, including work-in-progress and unfortunately a lot of image files that I had not gotten around to archiving them. Dang! 🙁
Being computer illiterate, I have no explanation for this strange
phenomenon other than gremlins at work. :p I would be grateful of any help to recover the use of the drive from its mysterious disappearance.
Shan
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 3, 2003
James,

Just now I clicked on the left (+ sign) of "Disc drives" and saw a drop down with three branches:- Iomega Zip 250 USB Device, ST380021A and USBAT Compact flash USB Device. I went onto the others and clicked them all open one after another. There was still no sign of the missing Drive F!?
On top of that, I didn’t see "troubleshoot". Is it within the "Computer Management" window? Sorry to keep bringing this up.

Shan
J
jhjl1
Dec 3, 2003
Could ST380021A be your F drive? Double click on the ST380021A and it will open a window, troubleshoot should be near the bottom right corner.

You can also access the troubleshooter by : start>help and support>pick a help topic>fixing a problem>troubleshoot problems>overviews, articles and tutorials>in the list of troubleshooters choose hardware and follow the directions.

— Have A Nice Day, 🙂
James Hutchinson
http://www.pbase.com/myeyesview
EW
Ed_Wurster
Dec 3, 2003
wrote…

Just now I clicked on the left (+ sign) of "Disc drives" and saw a drop
down with three branches:- Iomega Zip 250 USB Device, ST380021A and USBAT Compact flash USB Device. I went onto the others and clicked them all open one after another. There was still no sign of the missing Drive F!?
On top of that, I didn’t see "troubleshoot". Is it within the "Computer
Management" window? Sorry to keep bringing this up.

Shan –

ST380021A is your boot hard disk. The other drive which was installed is not recognized by Windows.

Simple solution: take it back to the store.

More complex solution: start troubleshooting:

1. Learn about the startup sequence your computer goes through, and look at the various BIOS pages you can access just after boot. Is the secondary drive listed?

2. Shut down the computer and unplug the power cable. Open the computer and find the second drive. Is the data (ribbon) cable plugged in at both ends? Is the power cable plugged in?

Ed
BH
Beth_Haney
Dec 3, 2003
Shan, I think it’s time to start using that extended warranty! 🙂
I
imacgirl
Dec 3, 2003
Shan,

By any wild chance, is this an external drive and could it have come unplugged? I did that with mine and was wondering why it couldn’t be found. 😉 Yes, it helps to have it plugged in! Hope it’s something as simple as this, these are the best kind of problems to solve. I wish you luck!

Barb
DG
Don_Girard
Dec 3, 2003
Shan

If you haven’t done so by now, completely shut down your computer (not a restart), wait for 10-15 seconds and start it in your normal way. Some times computers will find things that Bill Gates(Microsoft) lost.

If that fails, you can remove the left side and do a ‘look see’ if the ribbon cable or power cable came off one of your drives or the mother board. Be sure to turn off all power and remove 110v plug from the wall before touching anything inside. If a cable did become dislodged, gently re-attach it. Avoid touching your memory chips and cpu.

Don
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 3, 2003
To All who posted,

I have just about exhausted all the avenues suggested here and can’t seem to get anywhere. Even started the puter in Safe mode as suggested, as a wild shot, by my #1 son but still unable to access or see the missing drive on the Window Explorer.

The puter casing fortunately swings open easily on a hinge when two large buttons in top and bottom rear is pressed down together. The drive is still in place. At least nobody came and stole it! 🙂 The tape-connector is firmly in place, just as the working C-drive. So that was that. I got so nervous and sweaty after this exercise that required a quick shower and a leisurely large straight malt to calm my poor nerves. :p

The missing secondary drive was installed by a local CompUSA store. So it may not be under the original warranty. The obvious and only way left is to take it to the same place to get it fixed. I am going over there tomorrow to make sure they handle software problems before I lug the puter over.

I am grateful to all of you for taking time to help. Thanks.

Shan

EDIT:- for typing errors, as usual. 😉
I
imacgirl
Dec 3, 2003
Shan,

You have a terrific attitude and a fabulous sense of humor! 🙂 I’m really happy you’re back on the forum, you can brighten up anyone’s day! Hope the missing drive appears soon!

Barb
NS
Nancy_S
Dec 4, 2003
Shan,

You are a funny guy…entertaining to read your posts, though I know exactly how you felt opening up your computer…I had the same sweaty reaction to the Dell tech having me take parts out of my 3 day old computer. I told him I didn’t think I was qualified to be doing this, but he insisted I could do it and it worked when we were finished!

Nancy
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 4, 2003
Barb and Nancy,

I believe there’s almost always a little something that can lighten up the darkest gloom, if you know where to look. At least that’s how I find life. Perhaps that is what helped in keeping my sanity and balance through the troughs of adversity and strife. My wife has a different take on the matter. She thinks it’s fool’s paradise. But when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a dunce hat. Now that calls for another wee dram of my favorite libation. 🙂

Shan
NS
Nancy_S
Dec 4, 2003
Shan,

Cheers and bottoms up!
TF
Terri_Foster
Dec 4, 2003
Shan,

Maybe you never deleted the hard drive and instead hid it. I’m not real clear on how you can hide or unhide a hard drive but have heard it can be done for security purposes. Have you tried to search for any of your files on this missing or invisible hard drive?

Terri
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 5, 2003
Terri,

Thank you for your suggestion of another angle to examine the problem. I searched for the image folders and files by name of work-in-progess and the ones I hadn’t gotten around to archiving it. They were just not in the puter any place. To add or delete a device, I understand that I have to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" logo on the Task Bar at the bottom of the Windows screen. On my computer, the only two hardware items that are "removable" are the Zip drive and the card reader.

Shan
TF
Terri_Foster
Dec 5, 2003
Shan,

I think I would just pick up the phone book and find someone who fixes computers. It shouldn’t take a pro long to sniff out your problem. I wouldn’t think the cost would be extreme either. As an example, we just paid someone $60 to put some pictures on a couple of CDs for us since they were on my old Win 98 that had NO CD burner. It was worth it to us not to have to hassle with it, and pay for software that would only be used one time. So, what I’m saying is that it really doesn’t cost as much as you might think to have a pro look at your computer.

Terri
MM
Mac_McDougald
Dec 5, 2003
You said you checked the ribbon cables to the HD, best I remember. Is the *power cable* still plugged into the HD?

Mac
PL
Paul_L_UK
Dec 5, 2003
Shan

Without getting my hands on the computer, I can only offer advice.

The OS can only see what the BIOS tells it exists. You seem to have done all you can in Windows, so it seems it doesn’t exits in the OS.

I suspect that the BIOS cannot see the device. There are ways to check, if you are comfortable with it.
When your system boots up from powered off, you should see a splash screen which displays drive info – it might be very quick, depending on your system. You should see in order drives C; D; E; etc for hard drives and CD/DVD/CDRW, and a short description. If you can see the drive there, then the BIOS can see it. If it can’t, there are a few things you can try, I could explain a few if you would like, but best not here. You can get me direct at paul at pbl dot me dot uk.(shouldn’t get any spam with that one)

On thing that confuses me is that you are not showing a CD drive ?

Paul
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 7, 2003
Mac,

The power cable is plugged too, same as the C drive which nis still working, thank goodness.

Shan
SK
Shan_Ko
Dec 7, 2003
Paul,

Thanks for your offer to help, but I am afraid to try. :p The splash screen must be flying by because I don’t see anything except a mere flicker and then black. Then comes the Windows "Welcome" screen, folowed by the Desktop with the logos.
I think for the uninitiated such as myself the safe route would be for me to get it looked at by people with experience, as suggested by Richard in a previous post.

Shan
R
Redmonite
Dec 8, 2003
By the way has anyone checked to see how the drive is jumpered? Could it be that the second drive is trying to ALSO be the master? On each IDE ribbon cable you can have one master and one slave. In addition to trying to have two masters (or two slaves) on one cable there are some BIOS’s that won’t recognize a drive if it’s the only one on the cable and it’s jumpered as a SLAVE.

Finally on the jumpers – I’ve had mixed luck using the "cable select" jumper setting. Never figured out whether it was differences in drive firmware, IDE controller, cable, or whatever. I just jumpered a master and a slave and went on my way.

FYI – some BIOS’s don’t show anything interesting on boot – you have to get into the BIOS setup to see whether it recognizes both drives.

wrote in message
Somewhere in the process of deleting old/already archived data files, I
lost a secondary HD. It should still be inside my puter physically. Only I cannot access it and the secondary, Drive F, is no longer visible on the "tree" when I opened the Windows Explorer.
After the initial shock, I went looking in the Recycle Bin. The Drive F
was not among the deleted files. Then, I did several System Restores going successively backwards. Still no Drive F.
The puter runs Windows XP Home. Since I am not computer savy, I had the
secondary drive installed by CompUSA, and had been fine all along since last June. Up till now, everything else remain working including the DVD-R, CD-RW, primary Drive C, the Zip and card reader. they are all present and correct in Windows Explorer.
My drive C (80 MB) holds all programe files. The missing Drive F (200 GB)
holds all data, including work-in-progress and unfortunately a lot of image files that I had not gotten around to archiving them. Dang! 🙁
Being computer illiterate, I have no explanation for this strange
phenomenon other than gremlins at work. :p I would be grateful of any help to recover the use of the drive from its mysterious disappearance.
Shan

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