Hello,
I have been facing some strange problems with hd drives lately:
I have a pc (xp pro sp2) with 3 sata hard drives. All of them are connected as ide though, because we did not want to put them on raid... (at least this is what I understood from the tech guy who made the configuration)
HDD 1 (drive C) : WesternDigital 75G / 10.000rpm - has all windows and programs installed
HDD 2 (drive D) : Maxtor 300G / 7200rpm - only for files and storage
HDD 3 (drive E) : Maxtor 300G / 7200 rpm - only for files and storage
(motherboard is MSI 975X Platinum)
2 months ago HDD 3 starts showing "windows write failed" though even if I was not working on this drive. After various efforts I couldn't fix the problem so, I unplugged the drive in order to be able to continue working, thinking I could solve the problem later.
1 month ago the (while working only with the 2 drives) the internal power supply (450w) failed so we replaced it with a 550w and connected again the HDD 3 to check if it was a problem caused by the power supply. Everything seemed to work fine again.
Until 2 days ago, I get a blue checkdisk screen for drive E, which while running it says that almost every sector from drive E is not readable (I don't remember exactly the phrase it was displaying) After that, drive E (HDD 3) has disappeared from windows although it is connected on the motherboard.
Today, I decided to take a look at this problem and as i check the bios first to see if drive E is detected from the BIOS I realize that : neither maxtor drives are detected from the bios.
So, bios detects only ONE drive, (the HDD1 with the windows installations and everything)
If I try to autodetect, it finds only one more drive but with 136G space, so I guess that this is the problematic HDD 3. So, I quit without saving (in case I lose HDD2 as well) and login XP.
In XP I can see drives HDD 1 (C) & HDD 2 (D). It is working, I can see files and folders, I run Tune-Up utilities, it is showing fine.
I cannot see of course HDD 3 (E)
Can this be possible? For a drive not to be detected by Bios and still be visible and working in Windows??
Do you have any suggestions on how to proceed with it?
ps. Meanwhile I have been facing many problems with the print spooler as not starting at all but I guess that this is a different issue and I will post another thread for this. I am just mentioning it here in case someone sees some connection to the drives issue.
Thank you in advance for your time and help
I have been facing some strange problems with hd drives lately:
I have a pc (xp pro sp2) with 3 sata hard drives. All of them are connected as ide though, because we did not want to put them on raid... (at least this is what I understood from the tech guy who made the configuration)
HDD 1 (drive C) : WesternDigital 75G / 10.000rpm - has all windows and programs installed
HDD 2 (drive D) : Maxtor 300G / 7200rpm - only for files and storage
HDD 3 (drive E) : Maxtor 300G / 7200 rpm - only for files and storage
(motherboard is MSI 975X Platinum)
2 months ago HDD 3 starts showing "windows write failed" though even if I was not working on this drive. After various efforts I couldn't fix the problem so, I unplugged the drive in order to be able to continue working, thinking I could solve the problem later.
1 month ago the (while working only with the 2 drives) the internal power supply (450w) failed so we replaced it with a 550w and connected again the HDD 3 to check if it was a problem caused by the power supply. Everything seemed to work fine again.
Until 2 days ago, I get a blue checkdisk screen for drive E, which while running it says that almost every sector from drive E is not readable (I don't remember exactly the phrase it was displaying) After that, drive E (HDD 3) has disappeared from windows although it is connected on the motherboard.
Today, I decided to take a look at this problem and as i check the bios first to see if drive E is detected from the BIOS I realize that : neither maxtor drives are detected from the bios.
So, bios detects only ONE drive, (the HDD1 with the windows installations and everything)
If I try to autodetect, it finds only one more drive but with 136G space, so I guess that this is the problematic HDD 3. So, I quit without saving (in case I lose HDD2 as well) and login XP.
In XP I can see drives HDD 1 (C) & HDD 2 (D). It is working, I can see files and folders, I run Tune-Up utilities, it is showing fine.
I cannot see of course HDD 3 (E)
Can this be possible? For a drive not to be detected by Bios and still be visible and working in Windows??
Do you have any suggestions on how to proceed with it?
ps. Meanwhile I have been facing many problems with the print spooler as not starting at all but I guess that this is a different issue and I will post another thread for this. I am just mentioning it here in case someone sees some connection to the drives issue.
Thank you in advance for your time and help