"now you see me, now you dont" HD

[lara19]

I have a 2 ide hardrive (master-20G 7200 rpm seagate and slave-10G Samsung 5200 rpm). Everything is working fine until recently i defrag my slave hd with diskeeper . Now my slave hd cant be detected by my bios and windows xp professional. Actually its now a "now you see me now you dont" hd. If i turn my comp off and switch it back on, i can see it but when i restart it disappears. What seems to be the problem here?

 

[wolluf]

When you can see it, try running chkdsk on it.

 

[lara19]

i ran chkdsk on the drive. and its ok. the hd still disappears every now and then. i forgot to add that i partitioned this drive using powerquest drive image and the partitioned part it hidden coz it stores the image file of my system.

 

[wolluf]

Sorry - don't understand. Are you saying there isn't a problem then (because drive is supposed to be hidden)? Or it is a problem - because should always be hidden, and sometimes its not? Does the drive have just one partition with the backup image on it?

 

[Kocky]

Did you checked if the IDE cable is firmly inserted ?

 

[lara19]

i checked the ide cable, The is drive is partitioned, one part is hidden, What i cant see is the other half which is not supposed to be hidden.

 

[wolluf]

How is it partitioned? eg, is it 2 primary partitions or is it a primary and extended? If the second, is the image on the primary partition? If so, hiding the primary might also be hiding the extended bit.

 

[lara19]

im getting confused. Anyway i have 2 HDs. Both disks are partitioned. Both have logical and primary. The hidden drive is the logical part of my second HD which contains the image of the primary drive on my first HD.

drive name-type-status-pri/log
c -ntfs-active-primary
d -ntfs-active-primary
h -ntfs-none -logical
g -ntfs-hidden-logical

c and h (master)
d and g (slave)(contains the image of drive c)

 

[wolluf]

Is it drive image that's hiding the partition with image on it? Or do you did this yourself, and if so, using what?

When the whole drive 'disappears', I take it you mean from explorer - but can disk management (run diskmgmt.msc) see it?

 

[lara19]

I use Powerquest driveimage to partition, create and hide the partition. My bios and explorer cant see it. When the drive disappear i checked the bios and it says none. When i say disappear the whole HD (slave) disappears

 

[wolluf]

How do you check the bios? (just by watching post screen?)
Is it set up to auto detect in the bios? You said you've checked the cabling (you have got the correct IDE cable - eg, 80 wire if ATA66 or faster drive(s)), what about the jumpers? (eg, if set to master & slave, try them both set to cable select, or vice versa & just check they set correctly for both disks. Some disks have settings for when they're only disk & when there is a slave present).
Have you tried disk management like I asked? (XP can sometimes see disks which don't appear in the bios - I just wondered how invisible the disk is).

 

[lara19]

I press the delete key when windows starts, I checked the cabling if its loose and i think nothing is wrong there. I tried disk management and the drive is not there My mother board is jumper free (asus cuv4xc). I didn't have a hard time installing the second disk coz windows easily detects it. And yes the setup is auto detect in bios

 

[wolluf]

lara19,

I meant the jumpers on the (back of the) hard drives.
What sort of drives (eg, ATA33, 66, 100) - the 20GB is likely to be at least ATA66, the 10GB might be ATA33 or 66.
What sort of IDE cable? (80 or 40 wire)
Did you set the jumpers on the drives when you set this up, or just attach them without looking?

 

[theBIGBEARzz]

HELP ___ Saw this post and had to ask a question.
help-- I Had same problem... WInXP... all of a sudden cdrom and dvdrom are not recoginized. Not seen in win explorer or anywhere but drives open and show power...HOW CAN I FIND THEM AND GET THEM BACK,,,>>>
BigBear
HELP

 

[lara19]

The 20G(7200 rpm) is set to master and the 10G(5200)is slave on a 40 pin 80 conductor cable. Both is ATA 66. I set the jumpers before i install it.

 

[wolluf]

Problem started after defrag with Diskkeeper. Was this just the non-hidden partition you defragged?

What happens if you attach the slave as master on either the primary or secondary ide (I know it won't boot with no operating system, but does the bios see it?)

 

[lara19]

I didn't defrag the hidden partition just the visible part. And yes i can see the drive when i switch the HD

 

[wolluf]

Taking the drive swapping a bit further - if you set the master drive as slave, does the bios consistently see it? (either on its own as slave or with the 'slave' as master). If it doesn't - I'd suggest trying a new IDE cable.

If you've only one device on second IDE, you could put slave hard drive on there as Master with CD/DVD or whatever as slave (doesn't answer the question why, but if it works...).

If none of this helps, on the defrag, can only suggest unhiding and defragging second partition too - though I can't think of any reason why defragging should affect bios's ability to see a drive!

 

[jdetal]

When a friend bought a new PC with XP in it, she had the same problem. Everything started out fine but after we installed a load of software, the primary hd started its disappearing act. We checked everything: jumpers, cables, etc. It just kept happening. Now we see it, now we don't. We returned the PC to the vendor, they replaced the hard disk, and everything's fine since then.

 

[lara19]

i did it. the drive didn't disappear as long as i dont hide the partition. Thanks for the interest in my problem