Hard Drive Disappears

I recently built a new computer, and have installed Windows XP Pro x64 as my
only OS. All of my new drives are SATA, and everything in the install went
fine, with no errors. All of the hard drives are recognized, and I didn't
have to manually install any drivers (XP picked up my SATA drives just fine
on its own).

Once I had it up and running smoothly, I broke down my old computer, which
was running XP Pro x86 (32bit). I pulled out both of the old IDE drives and
connected them in the new box, one at a time, in order to copy over my files.
With the first drive, a 40Gb Maxtor, everything went fine. With the other,
a 120Gb Seagate, I am having problems. When I first boot up the box, it
recognizes the drive, and I'm able to start copying files. If I leave it
idle for a while, and go do something else with the computer, like read my
email or play a game, it "forgets" the drive is there. I can no longer
access it, and it doesn't show up at all in Drive Management. All the SATA
stuff (two hard drives and the DVD-ROM) is fine, but the IDE drive just
disappears. Rescanning for drives doesn't find it; and I have to completely
reboot the machine in order for it to find the drive again.

Any idea what is causing this?

philo
Mon Apr 21 23:50:09 PDT 2008


"Luchog Llewynyth" <Luchog Llewynyth@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:AED312E9-A36C-4821-9C03-E160C5894897@microsoft.com...
> I recently built a new computer, and have installed Windows XP Pro x64 as
my
> only OS. All of my new drives are SATA, and everything in the install
went
> fine, with no errors. All of the hard drives are recognized, and I didn't
> have to manually install any drivers (XP picked up my SATA drives just
fine
> on its own).
>
> Once I had it up and running smoothly, I broke down my old computer, which
> was running XP Pro x86 (32bit). I pulled out both of the old IDE drives
and
> connected them in the new box, one at a time, in order to copy over my
files.
> With the first drive, a 40Gb Maxtor, everything went fine. With the
other,
> a 120Gb Seagate, I am having problems. When I first boot up the box, it
> recognizes the drive, and I'm able to start copying files. If I leave it
> idle for a while, and go do something else with the computer, like read my
> email or play a game, it "forgets" the drive is there. I can no longer
> access it, and it doesn't show up at all in Drive Management. All the
SATA
> stuff (two hard drives and the DVD-ROM) is fine, but the IDE drive just
> disappears. Rescanning for drives doesn't find it; and I have to
completely
> reboot the machine in order for it to find the drive again.
>
> Any idea what is causing this?


First thing I;d do is copy all the data over...
then just plain stop using the drive

You may want to run the mfg's diagnostic utility on it

Carlos
Tue Apr 22 07:06:01 PDT 2008

Luchog,
A couple of questions:
- Are you plugging the 120 GB Seagate in the same IDE connector as the 40GB
Maxtor? Maybe you have a faulty IDE connector.
- Are you plugging the 120 GB Seagate as a slave in the same cable as the
40GB Maxtor? Are the jumpers Ok?

Carlos

"Luchog Llewynyth" wrote:

> I recently built a new computer, and have installed Windows XP Pro x64 as my
> only OS. All of my new drives are SATA, and everything in the install went
> fine, with no errors. All of the hard drives are recognized, and I didn't
> have to manually install any drivers (XP picked up my SATA drives just fine
> on its own).
>
> Once I had it up and running smoothly, I broke down my old computer, which
> was running XP Pro x86 (32bit). I pulled out both of the old IDE drives and
> connected them in the new box, one at a time, in order to copy over my files.
> With the first drive, a 40Gb Maxtor, everything went fine. With the other,
> a 120Gb Seagate, I am having problems. When I first boot up the box, it
> recognizes the drive, and I'm able to start copying files. If I leave it
> idle for a while, and go do something else with the computer, like read my
> email or play a game, it "forgets" the drive is there. I can no longer
> access it, and it doesn't show up at all in Drive Management. All the SATA
> stuff (two hard drives and the DVD-ROM) is fine, but the IDE drive just
> disappears. Rescanning for drives doesn't find it; and I have to completely
> reboot the machine in order for it to find the drive again.
>
> Any idea what is causing this?

Colin
Tue Apr 22 07:48:00 PDT 2008

Replace the IDE cable. You may be using one of the older 40-wire/40-pin
cables. You need an 80-wire/40 pin cable. The operating speeds of the
newer computers cause way to much crosstalk on the older cables and the 40
ground wires deal with that.

"Luchog Llewynyth" <Luchog Llewynyth@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:AED312E9-A36C-4821-9C03-E160C5894897@microsoft.com...
>I recently built a new computer, and have installed Windows XP Pro x64 as
>my
> only OS. All of my new drives are SATA, and everything in the install
> went
> fine, with no errors. All of the hard drives are recognized, and I didn't
> have to manually install any drivers (XP picked up my SATA drives just
> fine
> on its own).
>
> Once I had it up and running smoothly, I broke down my old computer, which
> was running XP Pro x86 (32bit). I pulled out both of the old IDE drives
> and
> connected them in the new box, one at a time, in order to copy over my
> files.
> With the first drive, a 40Gb Maxtor, everything went fine. With the
> other,
> a 120Gb Seagate, I am having problems. When I first boot up the box, it
> recognizes the drive, and I'm able to start copying files. If I leave it
> idle for a while, and go do something else with the computer, like read my
> email or play a game, it "forgets" the drive is there. I can no longer
> access it, and it doesn't show up at all in Drive Management. All the
> SATA
> stuff (two hard drives and the DVD-ROM) is fine, but the IDE drive just
> disappears. Rescanning for drives doesn't find it; and I have to
> completely
> reboot the machine in order for it to find the drive again.
>
> Any idea what is causing this?

LuchogLlewynyth
Tue Apr 22 07:58:01 PDT 2008

My motherboard only has a single IDE connector; and I'm only plugging in one
drive at a time, so there can't be any master/slave conflicts. The Maxtor
worked fine when I had it plugged in; but thinking back, I may not have had
it connected long enough for it to encounter this problem. I cleaned it off
much more quickly.

The Seagate works fine while it's still recognized, and transfer speeds are
very fast and error-free. If it was a faulty IDE connector or cable, I'd
expect to see problems with data transfer. The bios always recognizes it,
and it always works fine right after reboot, so I would think it would have
to be a Windows issue.

All previous diagnostics were normal, and I never had a problem with it in
the old box.

I wonder if it's something to do with the filesystem. They're both NTFS,
but the old drive was from a 32bit system, and the new system is 64bit. That
shouldn't be an issue, though; since XP is supposed to handle multiple
filesystems, and I never had a problem with the 32bit XP Pro recognizing and
handling any of my legacy Win2k NTFS, Win98SE FAT32, or FAT16 drives. Maybe
x64 has a bug?

"Carlos" wrote:

> Luchog,
> A couple of questions:
> - Are you plugging the 120 GB Seagate in the same IDE connector as the 40GB
> Maxtor? Maybe you have a faulty IDE connector.
> - Are you plugging the 120 GB Seagate as a slave in the same cable as the
> 40GB Maxtor? Are the jumpers Ok?
>
> Carlos
>
> "Luchog Llewynyth" wrote:
>
> > I recently built a new computer, and have installed Windows XP Pro x64 as my
> > only OS. All of my new drives are SATA, and everything in the install went
> > fine, with no errors. All of the hard drives are recognized, and I didn't
> > have to manually install any drivers (XP picked up my SATA drives just fine
> > on its own).
> >
> > Once I had it up and running smoothly, I broke down my old computer, which
> > was running XP Pro x86 (32bit). I pulled out both of the old IDE drives and
> > connected them in the new box, one at a time, in order to copy over my files.
> > With the first drive, a 40Gb Maxtor, everything went fine. With the other,
> > a 120Gb Seagate, I am having problems. When I first boot up the box, it
> > recognizes the drive, and I'm able to start copying files. If I leave it
> > idle for a while, and go do something else with the computer, like read my
> > email or play a game, it "forgets" the drive is there. I can no longer
> > access it, and it doesn't show up at all in Drive Management. All the SATA
> > stuff (two hard drives and the DVD-ROM) is fine, but the IDE drive just
> > disappears. Rescanning for drives doesn't find it; and I have to completely
> > reboot the machine in order for it to find the drive again.
> >
> > Any idea what is causing this?

LuchogLlewynyth
Tue Apr 22 18:48:58 PDT 2008

Nope, it's a new 80-wire cable.

"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

> Replace the IDE cable. You may be using one of the older 40-wire/40-pin
> cables. You need an 80-wire/40 pin cable. The operating speeds of the
> newer computers cause way to much crosstalk on the older cables and the 40
> ground wires deal with that.
>
> "Luchog Llewynyth" <Luchog Llewynyth@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news:AED312E9-A36C-4821-9C03-E160C5894897@microsoft.com...
> >I recently built a new computer, and have installed Windows XP Pro x64 as
> >my
> > only OS. All of my new drives are SATA, and everything in the install
> > went
> > fine, with no errors. All of the hard drives are recognized, and I didn't
> > have to manually install any drivers (XP picked up my SATA drives just
> > fine
> > on its own).
> >
> > Once I had it up and running smoothly, I broke down my old computer, which
> > was running XP Pro x86 (32bit). I pulled out both of the old IDE drives
> > and
> > connected them in the new box, one at a time, in order to copy over my
> > files.
> > With the first drive, a 40Gb Maxtor, everything went fine. With the
> > other,
> > a 120Gb Seagate, I am having problems. When I first boot up the box, it
> > recognizes the drive, and I'm able to start copying files. If I leave it
> > idle for a while, and go do something else with the computer, like read my
> > email or play a game, it "forgets" the drive is there. I can no longer
> > access it, and it doesn't show up at all in Drive Management. All the
> > SATA
> > stuff (two hard drives and the DVD-ROM) is fine, but the IDE drive just
> > disappears. Rescanning for drives doesn't find it; and I have to
> > completely
> > reboot the machine in order for it to find the drive again.
> >
> > Any idea what is causing this?
>