Hard drive gone....missing?

[Headstrong]

Ok, lemme break it down, see if anyone can help me out here. Any help is MUCH appreciated in advance.

About 2 weeks ago, I began getting Cyclonic Redundancy Check data errors, apparently due to feedback in IDE cables that were too close. So, I changed em, problem fixed. I had to format, but saved most everything that didn't get the error.

So, i do a scandisk and check to see that D (my 80GB drive is fine), and it is, so I put everything back on there with a plan to do a backup in 2-3 days.

Everything is good for about 2 days...I wake up today, and D is missing. It's not in My Computer, however, the device manager sees it (WDC WD800JB-more numbers) and bios sees it as working perfectly.

Windows XP seems to have lost it. My question is, does anyone know how to add it back or is there a bigger problem? Help is appreciated.

[Headstrong]

What the hell?

My DVD and CD Writer no longer show up either...

[bailey]

check for a virus

xp is a regestered activated installation right

[Bill in SD, CA]

Welcome to TechIMO!!

What shows in My Computer > Manage > Disk Management?

Bill

[John Prophet]

Bios battery dying? motherboard ide controller dying?

[Headstrong]

Thanks for the welcome...though I do hope I'm not too frequent of a visitor after this...haha

It shows my C and E drives (my 30 GB drive partitioned), but my dvd and cd drives are missing and so is the D drive (an 80 gb drive with all my music and old websites and school stuff is on).

This all happened after I used ad-aware to dispose of GAIN. Is it possible this is a windows xp problem and reinstalling windows would do it?

[Headstrong]

Originally posted by John Prophet
Bios battery dying? motherboard ide controller dying?

How would I check this?

[thronka]

Sounds like you changed a drive letter or hid the hard disk. Use the Storage Manager in Windows (Control Panel > Administation Tools > Storage Manager (Snapin) )
and see if 1) the disk is healthy and 2) if it has a drive letter. It it doesn't make a drive letter for it (D in your case).

[Headstrong]

That's the thing. It doesn't show up there. My 30GB drives partitioned are on there...that is it. My partitions are healthy. There is nothing else there however.

[Headstrong]

Not many ideas yet...

Found more stuff that may help. Booting in Safe Mode allowed me to boot the windows CD...

BUT, when I looked to maybe redo windows, this is what is said for the 80 GB hard drive when I went to see if I could reinstall on it...

"76317 MB Disk 0 at Id1 on bus 0 on atapi [unavailable]"