Hard Drive dissapears sometimes

[andrei3333]

ok so i have 4 hard drives , 2 of them are 500GM seagate 7200.11

i turn on my pc and get a dos error saying some windows load file is not found, os i install vista 64 on the other 500 GB hdd

once that installs i can see the older hard drive in My Computer and can access it, but the next day i turn my pc on and its gone,,,,

why is my hard drive dissapearing ??? is it dead ?
what should i do ?

 

[Modelworks]

Check the SATA cables. I had a very similar experience with a bad cable. It was a loose fit on one end. Sometimes the drive was there, sometimes not.
There are some really poorly made SATA cables out there.

 

[andrei3333]

ok im going to examine the cables now, i unplugged the "faulty" drive from the power cable and sata cable, booted in the "new" vista i intalled, but at the dos screen where windows loads it asks me which OS to start ?

also if i put in my Vista DVD and reboot, try to install OR repair, it also shows me the original vista installations even thought the HDD is not even plugged in, is there a problem in the bios maybe as well ?

i did get this error twice like half a year ago, but i reinstalled vista and all was ok

 

[AstroGuardian]

I had the same problem with 300Gb Maxtor. It disappeared twice in a month eve though it was an OS drive. I unplugged it and had it replaced. Few months later, i put it back in as a spare backup drive int it works fine for two years now with 24/7 uptime. I never got the truth behind this and it gets on my nerves.

 

[Anosh]

What you should do is to check the forums on seagate.com to see if your drive is one of the unlucky ones:
http://forums.seagate.com

Tools to see if your drive has the bad firmware:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seag...ocId=207931&NewLang=en

The firmware available should your drive be affected:
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/..._drives&thread.id=8968

These are the affected generations: 7200.11, ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22