Case of the disappearing drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rudiger Gussett
  • Start date Start date
R

Rudiger Gussett

I've got a 30gb FAT32 (Seagate 5400rpm ATA) drive set up as slave on my 1st
IDE channel of my XP system. It doesn't get much use beyond keeping a
secondary copy of some of my more important files. However, at some stage
over the last few days, it has apparently disappeared. It no longer shows up
under Windows, although it does for BIOS. When I look at it in Device
Manager, it shows up as not initialized, as it does in Partition Magic
(unallocated).

Has anyone ever heard of a drive just losing it's entire index like this,
and is there any known cure? Can anyone offer any suggestions for recovery,
prior to me formatting it and seeing if it's still alive?

Thanks all.
 
I've got a 30gb FAT32 (Seagate 5400rpm ATA) drive set up as slave
on my 1st IDE channel of my XP system. It doesn't get much use
beyond keeping a secondary copy of some of my more important files.
Click to expand...
However, at some stage over the last few days, it has apparently
disappeared. It no longer shows up under Windows, although it
does for BIOS. When I look at it in Device Manager, it shows up
as not initialized, as it does in Partition Magic (unallocated).
Click to expand...
Has anyone ever heard of a drive just losing it's entire index like this,
Yep.

and is there any known cure?
Click to expand...

Yep, something's likely stomped on the MBR etc.

Thats why the bios can see it find but the OS cant.
Can anyone offer any suggestions for recovery,
prior to me formatting it and seeing if it's still alive?
Click to expand...

Yep, run findpart on it and see whats possible recovery wise.
 
I've got a 30gb FAT32 (Seagate 5400rpm ATA) drive set up as slave on my 1st
IDE channel of my XP system. It doesn't get much use beyond keeping a
secondary copy of some of my more important files. However, at some stage
over the last few days, it has apparently disappeared. It no longer shows up
under Windows, although it does for BIOS. When I look at it in Device
Manager, it shows up as not initialized, as it does in Partition Magic
(unallocated).

Has anyone ever heard of a drive just losing it's entire index like this,
and is there any known cure? Can anyone offer any suggestions for recovery,
prior to me formatting it and seeing if it's still alive?
Click to expand...

You could try erasing the mounted devices keys and letting XP
"re-find" the drives again on the next boot. Open the registry to,

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

and erase the entries there. Then reboot.
 
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