Hard drive is just gone... thats what my computer thinks at least.

domenz · 10-01-2007, 09:46 PM

First off, ill post what Im running and some hardware.

I dual boot xp and vista. I have 2 ide hard drives and one scsi with a pci card for it.

I use the scsi for virtual memory because its only 4gb large and i cant really store much on there. anyway, today I turned on my computer and it automatically boots into vista (thats normal i set it to do that) but it was taking extremely long to start up. 10minutes+ of loading(it did not successfully boot). so i restarted it and it was taking another 10min+ so i went out of the room for a while left it loading, did some stuff and came back a while later and it had started up. I noticed a noice that sounded like a drive was trying to start up but kept failing. So i checked my computer folder and it was missing the scsi drive... I looked at the computer management device manager. there are no errors there. everything looks fine.

I then booted in xp and it too took a while to boot up, but not as long. it also shows no sign of the drive..

I dont know how much help someone can give me from their perspective without actually being here. If there is anything that someone knows if this is common with vista or not.

i havent bothered to check physical connections. I probably should do that but i havent kicked it or moved the computer in anyway that would make a cable come loose. its not like they just pop out by themselves.

thanks for any help.

Carson · 10-01-2007, 09:56 PM

No, they don't pop out by themselves. Any other hardware changes in the way of DVD players or whatever? I hope you're not getting a failure of one of your drives, but that would indeed be a possibility, and I'm afraid that that does indeed happen all by itself.

If you decide to open the case, take a look-see how dusty it is in there. If it is really dirty, that might be good news: disconnect the problematic drive, and reconnect it—just like that. It's an old trick. If you are lucky, it will be all you need to do.

10-01-2007, 09:46 PM	#1 (permalink)
domenz Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1 OS: xp sp2, vista	Hard drive is just gone... thats what my computer thinks at least. First off, ill post what Im running and some hardware. I dual boot xp and vista. I have 2 ide hard drives and one scsi with a pci card for it. I use the scsi for virtual memory because its only 4gb large and i cant really store much on there. anyway, today I turned on my computer and it automatically boots into vista (thats normal i set it to do that) but it was taking extremely long to start up. 10minutes+ of loading(it did not successfully boot). so i restarted it and it was taking another 10min+ so i went out of the room for a while left it loading, did some stuff and came back a while later and it had started up. I noticed a noice that sounded like a drive was trying to start up but kept failing. So i checked my computer folder and it was missing the scsi drive... I looked at the computer management device manager. there are no errors there. everything looks fine. I then booted in xp and it too took a while to boot up, but not as long. it also shows no sign of the drive.. I dont know how much help someone can give me from their perspective without actually being here. If there is anything that someone knows if this is common with vista or not. i havent bothered to check physical connections. I probably should do that but i havent kicked it or moved the computer in anyway that would make a cable come loose. its not like they just pop out by themselves. thanks for any help.

10-01-2007, 09:56 PM	#2 (permalink)
Carson Registered User Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 43 OS: Windows XP, XP-64, Vista	Re: Hard drive is just gone... thats what my computer thinks at least. No, they don't pop out by themselves. Any other hardware changes in the way of DVD players or whatever? I hope you're not getting a failure of one of your drives, but that would indeed be a possibility, and I'm afraid that that does indeed happen all by itself. If you decide to open the case, take a look-see how dusty it is in there. If it is really dirty, that might be good news: disconnect the problematic drive, and reconnect it—just like that. It's an old trick. If you are lucky, it will be all you need to do.