Second hard drive is inaccessible

[Guest]

I have a PC with two physical hard drives (IDE) and they are also partioned
by Partition Magic.

I've WinXP and have been happy for a long while. A few months ago,
intermittently, the second drive became inaccessible. The BIOS said 'Primary
Slave: None'. A second boot-up would restore it - until last week. Now, it's
never there - only once in the last few days.

Friends wonder if the drive is damaged but, when it does work, all seems
smooth.
One drive has FAT and the other has N###. (Can't remember the acronym!)

I'd be extremely grateful for help.

Mary.

 

[Richard Urban]

But what is your question?

See

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Mistoffolees]

I have a PC with two physical hard drives (IDE) and they are also partioned
by Partition Magic.

I've WinXP and have been happy for a long while. A few months ago,
intermittently, the second drive became inaccessible. The BIOS said 'Primary
Slave: None'. A second boot-up would restore it - until last week. Now, it's
never there - only once in the last few days.

Friends wonder if the drive is damaged but, when it does work, all seems
smooth.
One drive has FAT and the other has N###. (Can't remember the acronym!)

I'd be extremely grateful for help.

Mary.

If the bios no longer detects the hard drive, then its
electronics have probably gone bad, meaning that the
drive has become inoperable. Several options: If no
backup for the data exists, then wait for good luck,
should it occur by this drive starting up again, and
backup the data files to the primary HD or other media.
If the question is about recovering data from a truly
dead HD, then one needs to consult a professional data
recovery organization and be ready to pay the costs.

 

[xfile]

Hi,

Suggest you to try several times again, IF (big if) you did not hear any
strange mechanical sound or something like scratching the hard disk. The
first thing after you can access the drive again, move or backup or copy
everything from it to another HD.

If you heard those sound, it is likely that your HD is already suffering
physical damage and trying to access it will further damage it and become
irreversible. In this case, please send the HD to professional data recovery
agency as suggested if you have important data.