computer help: Tech Question: One of my HDs continues to vanish upon restarting my computer. - Help.com



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Tech Question: One of my HDs continues to vanish upon restarting my computer.

Hey guys.

So, the situation is this: I have a fairly old rig that I built in 2003. That being said, she still runs smoothly and I’m upgrading her so that I can hold off on building another rig for a year or two. The motherboard is an ASUS P4C800 E Deluxe. The processor is a P4 2.8ghz. For the longest time, I used just two Western Digital 120gb HDs, both IDE, the master being utilized for system files and programs, the slave housing extra files and music. About a year ago I added another WD 750gb HD with no problems. At this time the slave 120gb was relegated to housing film and music projects / programs.

I’ve made two changes recently, both on the same day:

1.) I added 2 additional sticks of Kingston RAM (ValueRAM, 1gb per stick, 184-pin DDR SDRAM (PC 3200)). The RAM seems to be working just fine - I currently have 4 sticks in the motherboard.

2.) I upgraded to Service Pack 3.

Having made these changes, I’m left with a slave 120gb HD that likes to vanish. By vanish I mean this:

-It shows up in BIOS with no problems recognized.
-When I load Windows (XP Pro, SP3), the HD is missing from my computer / device manager / disk management. As such, links to programs installed on it are broken.
-When I scan for new hardware in device manager, the disk immediately reappears and works perfectly. Programs are all operational. Scandisk finds no errors. The disk has been reformatted and tested again.
-After bringing the HD back, device manager shows no problems. Drivers are up to date.
-Once I restart the computer, the HD vanishes once again.

Does anyone have any idea what’s causing this? Thanks much for any help offered.

This open post was written 1 year, 2 months ago | V/U/S: 209, 5, 3 | Edit Post | Leave a reply | Report Post


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computer, music, Motherboard, Scan, Problem, Stick, Device Manager, Device, pro, IDE, Computers, technology, hard drives (How Tags Affect Reciprocity)

Replies (5)

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pghuma.TrollPolice offline Verified User (1 year, 2 months) Long Term User Shouts: 9 #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 2 months ago (4 days, 15 hours after post)

it cant be the psu, a hard drive doesnt use to much power, if he added a new graphics card i woud have agreed, but other than that i think it may be that theres a conflict with jumpers on your hard drive’s self. remove the jumpers and set master and slave in bios.

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super_ritchiebaby offline Verified User (1 year, 10 months) Long Term User Shouts: 9 #
Greenock, V4, GB | 1 year, 2 months ago (5 days, 15 hours after post)

Why would there be a conflict ? the poster has already said it shows in bios fine ? he has 4 sticks of memory 2 of which are 1gig he has 2x 120 gig drives and has added a 750gig , I suspect the psu has not enough power on bootup but when in o/s after all device drivers etc are loaded and settled in they sit back and give back a little power which is enough to re-start the power enough to re-start the drive

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pghuma.TrollPolice offline Verified User (1 year, 2 months) Long Term User Shouts: 9 #
An Unknown Location | 1 year, 2 months ago (5 days, 19 hours after post)

then take out 2 sticks of ram and see if your HDD works, if it works then you need a stronger psu. wats your psu’s current power?

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super_ritchiebaby offline Verified User (1 year, 10 months) Long Term User Shouts: 9 #
Greenock, V4, GB | 1 year, 2 months ago (2 weeks, 2 days after post)

Take one drive offline and see what happens

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Help me with: I love helping folk with pc/computer problems and want to start a list of things to ask to get a full picture before I can help any ideas?

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