[DrBeardy]

Hope someone can help with this, as it's got me scratching my head.

I reinstalled my computer the other day, and since then I've had a hard drive playing hide and seek with me. I have one hard drive partitioned in half containing two operating systems - one is Vista x64 SP1 and the other... let's say it's UNIX-based and made by a company whose name is a fruit. I also have a second hard disk with all my data and media on. Both are SATA, connected to the motherboard SATA ports and configured as AHCI. Windows Vista cannot for some reason see the data drive. The 'other' OS sees it just fine, as does any other OS I've booted from CD in my diagnostic attempts - Windows PE can see it, Ubuntu can see it - but Vista cannot.

To begin with, it would see the drive at first, until I attempted to open it in explorer or access any of the files directly, whereupon it would suddenly disappear. Now it just doesn't see it at all, even in Device Manager. Which rules out my usual uninstall-and-reboot method.

Any ideas?

[DrBeardy]

Just as an update which may or may not help - after mentioning uninstall-and-reboot, I had the idea of uninstalling the AHCI ports and SATA controller. After a reboot, the data drive reappeared and worked fine - for about ten minutes, then it disappeared again. Since then I've been able to bring the drive back just by clicking 'scan for hardware changes' in Device Manager, but it only works for a few minutes at best before disappearing again, and usually disappears instantly. Really puzzling me, this one.