Lost hd but appears when cdrom in drive.

[shytilwet]

:cool: This is so weird. I have one hard drive which is C drive, one that's D drive and a cdrom that's E drive. For weeks D drive has just been missing. It's not in My Computer. I've looked in the bios. Think I set all to auto. Tried installing a driver in control panel----add new hardware. Nothing. Then yesterday I had a cdrom in cdrom drive as I booted up and D:\ DRIVE was there!!!!

So what's happened. Something to do with slave and secondary master using same something?

If you can help please talk slowly.....like in hardware for dummies.

Thanx, folks.

Pentium 11 266MHz Win98SE :cool:

[Puckdropper]

Can you repeat the process on the computer?

I would guess you've got some conflict with your drives, so try this:
Go to Start> Run
Type "command" and press ok.
type "FDISK /STATUS" and write the information down. Post it here.

[shytilwet]

Well, it says:

Fixed Disk Drive Status

Disk Drv Mbytes Free Usage
1 2946 100%
C: 2946

[BlackSheep]

Wondering if you have one drive partitioned (split) or two physical drives? You can find out by finding your "My Computer" icon, then "Right-Clicking" on it and selecting "Properties" from the pop-up menu, you should get a System Properties Window. From there, select the Device Manager tab at the top, and then scan down the list and click on the plus sign beside the icon that says Disks Drives.

If it is two seperate drives and you only see one icon (Ignore The Floppy), chances are you could have serious problems.

Also next time you're in your CMOS setup, try Auto-Detecting your Hard Disks just to be sure...

Hope This Helps!!!

[nanosani]

what is the file system on the d drive ... and what operating system are you using...?

[shytilwet]

Thanks everyone. Mr.Sheep, I have two physical hard drives, neither one is partitioned.

In CMOS I have User for Primary master and Auto for the other three.

My Computer just shows C:\ and cdrom and floppy drive. It's only showed my 2nd hd twice now and I was able to copy some files from there to C:\

Both times I had booted up with a cd-rom in the drive. Co-incidence? I don't know.

Actually, I think that at least one of those 2 times, I couldn't see the cd-rom drive in My Comp.

O.S. is Win98SE on C:\ and Win95 on 2nd hd. Not sure what you mean by file ststem, sorry.

[dlh6213]

Open My Computer and right-click on the C:\ drive, click on Properties. In the window that pops up, select the General tab. There will be a couple of lines near the top that say:
Type
File System
Most likely you have FAT32 (but may be FAT16). Check the D:\ drive also (when you can access it)

[shytilwet]

C:\ is FAT32. That's the drive with Win98SE on it. The other drive, D:\ just says FAT but as it has Win95 I guess it must be FAT16.

Am madly copying all the files from D:\to C:\. Haven't turned the comp off for 2 days in case I can't see D:\ again. :D

[dlh6213]

Am madly copying all the files from D:\to C:\. Haven't turned the comp off for 2 days in case I can't see D:\ again. :D

Good idea! :) Is there a reason you still have Windows 95 on your computer? If not, after you get all your data copied, you could format it (use FAT32) and use it to store all your data -- away from your C drive (which is more likely to be attacked by intruders). You should still have backups somewhere else though!

[shytilwet]

Only reason is that my comp came with win98SE installed and a techie put in my old hd which was running win95.

To format it, do I do it through dos or how please?

The D:\ is still there now although I haven't done anything that worked. So, I guess it's a bit of a mystery....why it should disappear for a while and then come back.

[dlh6213]

That is weird how it comes and goes. It could have a bad connection, bad ribbon cable, or even a bad molex (power) connector. Try replacing the ribbon cable and connect it to a different molex.

To format, just right-click on the 'd' drive (that's the one you want to format, right?), and in the menu that drops down, select Format. Make sure you don't format the wrong drive!

[Real-tiner]

The motor bearings in D: may have failed too.