Hard Drive not in My Computer but ......

[dannylu88]

Hi guys,

I seem to have a problem with my annoying Hitachi HDS725050KLA360 500 GB SATA drive...

I have been using this drive for a while and recently it doesnt show up in My Computer anymore... i thought maybe something was loose so I took my computer apart and replug everything again. The weird thing is, my BIOS detects the drive and in the Device Manager under "Disk Drives" the drive is actually listed there, but the weird thing is, i cannot find the drive in Disk Management or in My Computer... please help... Thanks

-Dan

 

[ViRGE]

This is just a shot in the dark, but it sounds like the disk may be going bad. If Windows can see the hardware but not a valid partition, you won't have anything that will show up in My Computer. I'd see what the process is to RMA a Hitachi drive.

 

[dannylu88]

I sure hope not.... I have alot of files on that 500 gig... worst case scenario im going to format and see if that fixes anything

 

[Pirotech]

Test your hd.
May be hardware isn't compatible?

 

[dannylu88]

that is the thing, it is not a new drive, it was compatible for 2 years and now all of a sudden the drive doesnt show in my computer anymore, but still show in the disk drives section of the device manager

 

[Viper GTS]

What does it show as under drive management?

If a drive is not partitioned it would show all the symptoms you're describing, but would show up in drive management. If it is still showing as partitioned you may be able to re-mount it & have full access to the data.

Assuming the worst and it is showing as unpartitioned, there are disk recovery apps that can likely pull your data off. They aren't cheap, & the fact that you don't have a backup probably means your data isn't worth the cost to recover it. You might be able to find a functional demo. I would start there, then re-partition the drive & see what happens. Use Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test to check the drive as well:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

Viper GTS

 

[ColdFusion718]

Try it in a different computer.

 

[GenHoth]

Assuming you are using XP, try going to your control panel, then to Administrative tools -> computer management -> disk drives. I remember I had a bit of a problem with a new drive I had, all I had to do was change something in that menu and XP started recognizing the drive. I don't know why it would have suddenly switched off. But it sounds very similar to what happened to me.

 

[dannylu88]

I wish i had another computer to test it on.... it also doesnt show in Disk Management... it doesnt show up as a new partition or whatever, it only shows up in disk drives under device manager.

 

[SparkyJJO]

It doesn't even show up in the list of drives at the bottom section of disk management? That is really weird

Try this, go to the disk drives in the device manager and remove it, then reboot to let it detect it again. See if that changes anything.

 

[edmundoab]

The drive format just shows "RAW" ?
I remember I had that once with a new seagate 250GB
After doing a reformatting on another computer it worked fine after that.. but my initial windows installation had a CRC Error so maybe that caused the problem.

 

[dannylu88]

yeah i known.... thats why im lost with this problem.... it doesnt even show under diskmanagement but shows under disk drives....

I had already tried that twice.... uninstalled the drive twice and uninstalled the ide controllers twice also...

the weird thing is that all my other drives are completely fine.... I have been having problems with this Hitachi garbage drive ever since i got it

 

[edmundoab]

how about using it under a different system as a primary drive?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you have an sptd.sys driver installed, by any chance?