Problem with hard drive

[BigDonkey2]

i have a Maxtor 120 GB hard drive that installed a few months ago and it seems now its everyday that it just suddendly wont be recognized. after i restart my computer it works but then later it just doesnt get recognized and i cant get to anything on it. the error i get says "cannot be found" and the only way to get it back is to reset it. what seems to be the problem?

[dandragonrage]

It sounds like the circuit board on the HD is bad, the cable is bad/lose, and/or the IDE controller is bad. Try switching cables (including putting it on a different power cable) and putting it on a different channel. Run some diagnostics on it like what come with it or what's on the ultimate boot CD if you can get it to be recognized.

[LadyJaqie]

above poster is correct. reseat cables (including power ones) check everything you can even swap out cables and which power connector its using...

but it may be going dead ive seen maxtors die like this. back up your data NOW if you havent already.

and if you need to RMA it... I would sell it once you get it back and buy WD... they are just lots more reliable.

[Ice Czar]

also a good idea to reload the busmaster driver and the drivers for both channels
(Device manager > IDE ATA\ATAPI Controllers)
in case there is a corruption issue
check your physical configuration as well
do you have a jumper that is set to single, but ther is a slave present
or set to master with slave present when there isnt
try cable select for both devices
make sure any master is at the end of the cable
and that there isnt a slave without a master
try hooking up the various devices in a different combination

if you have a bad cable, or intermittent power problem
and you run the HDD diagnostic
you can get errors even when the drive is OK
if its only happening on one channel and cable
swap the device to the other and test

finally read the FAQs > Corruption 101
and the Partitioning & Optimizing Tutorial
(Specificaly Physical Configuration)

and if you can secure another known good PSU for your testing

when troubleshooting, crossparting and cross verifying is your freind ;)


check the Event Viewer as well for any error or warnings

[sp3nx0r]

Recently had a problem with my hdd going MIA in a little Dell I had sitting around. Had to take out IDE cable, bootup, get the "no operating system found", then plug the IDE cable in again and boot up to glorious hard drive workage. found it quite odd and stowed that away in the databanks