hard drive problem

[Aristoxenus]

I was changing drive letter yesterday and this morning one of my hard drives
was not recognized by the OS. It is running ok with no noises. It just is
invisible.

I am wondering what I can do to get this drive to be recognized again. IS
there software to handle such a situation?

Thanks

Tom Wagner

 

[Bill Blanton]

I was changing drive letter yesterday and this morning one of my hard drives
was not recognized by the OS. It is running ok with no noises. It just is
invisible.

It may just be an unfortunate coincedence and the "drive" failed. Do a system
restore to a point before the letter change. If that doesn't fix it, there is
another problem.

 

[Aristoxenus]

It may just be an unfortunate coincedence and the "drive" failed. Do a system
restore to a point before the letter change. If that doesn't fix it, there is
another problem.

 

[Aristoxenus]

It may just be an unfortunate coincedence and the "drive" failed. Do a system
restore to a point before the letter change. If that doesn't fix it, there is
another problem.

I restored the OS and it still could not find the drive. THanks for the reply

Tom Wagner

 

[Just D.]

When you change the drive letter this info should be written on the drive.
Try to open: Administrative Tool => Computer Management => Disk Management,
then find the lost drive if it is visible there and simply assign the
required letter. You could make this drive invisible by mistake. Or there is
one more possibility. Windows XP is stupid enough to assign to the drives
the letters that are already in use by the network shared drived. For
example if you have e: as your network share and then you plug in some USB
device with no pre-assigned letter then it can get the same E:\. This stupid
bug was never fixed in XP but there are not so many people aware of it.

Just D.

 

[Bill Blanton]

I restored the OS and it still could not find the drive. THanks for the reply

The first prudent step would be to check that the drive is visible in the BIOS.
If so, then the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive. You could use HDTune for that.

 

[Bill Blanton]

Not sure about the letter conflict "bug" w/ network shares, but it is
worth checking, however drive letter assignments are stored in the
registry. Doing a system restore should put things back the way they were.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I was changing drive letter yesterday and this morning one of my hard
drives
was not recognized by the OS. It is running ok with no noises. It just is
invisible.

I am wondering what I can do to get this drive to be recognized again. IS
there software to handle such a situation?

Thanks

Tom Wagner

Check in the BIOS that the drive is recognised. If it isn't, it has likely
failed and you should shut down, remove it, and move to data recovery. If
it is, in Windows, right-click on My Computer, choose Manage, then Disk
Management. Locate the drive in question, right-click, and choose Change
Drive Letters or Paths.

HTH
-pk

 

[Just D.]

You're right. It's using the device parameters, the disk ID, but keeps that
in the system registry. I guess each letter has it's own set. If you assign
another drive to the same letter the previous assignment is lost and next
time when you connect the first device it will get the letter by default.
When the partition is reformatted it also loses the drive letter since the
ID is changed. I use tons of external drives for camcorder, digital camera,
different card readers, backup enclosures, and this is a huge problem to
remember the letters of all of them and especially to keep them permanent. I
think I know why I wrote this nonsense in my previous message. For one very
long period of time, maybe in the first implementations of this feature,
Windows was making some remarks on the disks/partitions and I remember that
as soon as I was deleting these strange hidden/system files on the root of
the drives, the letters were changing after the next reboot. Then they
completely moved this info to the system registry.

I actually was the one who gave this idea to MS many years ago. It was very
convenient in OS/2 where you could assign any drive letter to CD drive and
keep it forever, adding new internal as well as all external and network
drives right after your primary internal drives. A few months later this
idea was implememted in Windows and it was propagated even to DOS where you
could make a reservation of the drive letters keeping Z: unused so that the
CD drive would occupy Z: - that's I always do. I was able to assign 3
letters to my 3 CD and DVD drives - X:, Y: and Z: and it was a great jump
ahead. Actually I use the virtual CD app from Nero and always keep X/Y drive
leters for these drives - very convenient.

Just D.

Bill Blanton

 

[Aristoxenus]

Check in the BIOS that the drive is recognised. If it isn't, it has likely
failed and you should shut down, remove it, and move to data recovery. If
it is, in Windows, right-click on My Computer, choose Manage, then Disk
Management. Locate the drive in question, right-click, and choose Change
Drive Letters or Paths.

HTH
-pk


I didn't get drive working but I learned some interesting things.

Thanks all for the replies.

I will get a new drive.

Tom Wagner