Missing hard disk

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

Imagine the scene: I've just got home from a hard day at work, and my wife
says "I went to have a look at the babies photos, but couldn't find them -
Where have you put them?", I reply with a rather sarcastic "They're on the
disk labelled 'Photos'...", to which I got a "But that doesn't exist
anymore..."

Panic ensues, and much angst later I find that although the hard disk can be
seen in the Bios and in my XP partition, it has suddenly disappeared from
Vista. This is a bit strange as we've been using it there for the last month
with no issues.

Anyone got a clue what's going on and how to rectify it?

Thanks.
 
Mr Fribbit,

Try viewing the Vista partition in Disk Management. Right click Computer
(formerly My Computer) and select Manage > Disk Management. All your drives
and assigned drive letters should show up there.

In Disk Management, you have various options for managing your drives. For
example, you can change drive letters. Just look around at the various
options and Actions available to see whether one of them can provide the
resolution you need. There is also a Help file available, as I recall.

Let us know what happens,

Freddy
 
Thanks for the response; I'd checked there and came up with nothing. As far
as Vista is concerned (device manager, disk management, explorer) the drive
is gone.
 
Mr Fribbit,

OK, that's a tough one to resolve, at least for me. If this problem remains
unresolved, you might try some other sites that also include help and forums.
Here is one to help you get started:

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/

You could also try googling to see what that turns up. Just a thought.

Take care,
 
Have a look in device manager (not disk manager) - is the drive there ? it
could be disabled
 
Thanks for the response; I'd checked there and came up with nothing. As far
as Vista is concerned (device manager, disk management, explorer) the drive
is gone.
Click to expand...
So how is the drive cabled (IDE Primary/secondary channel,Master/slave/CS,
SATA, SCSI, USB) ?
AFAIK the BIOS screen only recognizes the drive electronics, not the actual
media. At least the electronics are responding so there is hope.

You might see if your drive manufacturer has a NON-DESTRUCTIVE diagnostic that
runs from a DOS boot (it might be on the CD if you bought a 'boxed drive'
kit).
 
Mr Fribbit,

I just had the wild idea that, since BIOS detects the Vista partition,
select that as the first boot device, in BIOS. Have you tried that?
 
I hadn't, but I've solved it in a rather convoluted way - Opened the machine,
unplugged the SATA connector, re-booted, re-connected the SATA connector,
re-booted and voila one fully functional disk! Now all I have to do is write
some instructions for my wife for if it happens again...

thanks to everyone who took the time to respond.
 
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