[tghobar]

Hey geeks to go,

I have windows xp on my computer, and I have 2 hard drives. The C with the windows on it, and I have another one that is partitioned (D and E). Every once in a while, which has been frequent recently, I wont be able to see the drives in the My Computer menu. When I restart the computer, they are there, then they kind of dissapear. I try go to the Device manager and refresh or update changes, but it still cant find them. The only way is to restart the computer.
Whats wrong? What can I do?

T

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The obvious place to look would be a loose connection but that would probably make the drive disappaer permanently if that was the case. Try both ends including the power cable.

How old is the drive ? If it's more than 3 years old then it could quite possibly be about to fail if used often. I'd get any important data off it just in case. They always fail when you don't want them to

I assume the drive shows up always in the BIOS. Might be worth checking.

Also, have a look in Device Manager and see if there is anything untoward there as well. Check when its both visible and gone and see what Device Manager shows.

[Storman]

The obvious place to look would be a loose connection but that would probably make the drive disappaer permanently if that was the case. Try both ends including the power cable.

How old is the drive ? If it's more than 3 years old then it could quite possibly be about to fail if used often. I'd get any important data off it just in case. They always fail when you don't want them to

I assume the drive shows up always in the BIOS. Might be worth checking.

Also, have a look in Device Manager and see if there is anything untoward there as well. Check when its both visible and gone and see what Device Manager shows.

[tghobar]

Hey

Thanks for the response. I checked all the connections ofcourse first (Im an engineer!) and tried to troubleshoot before.
The conenctions are all good and tight, and it dont make sense since the hard drive is always there when i turn on the computer, and i mean always, but sometimes it disapears from the menu by itself. The device manager shows the drive normally when its recognized, but when it actually disappears, I can refresh the device manager and update it all I want it doesnt see it, the only thing i can do is restart the computer then everything is fine.

It could be as you said that the drive might be getting old, and simply giving up after a while of being on. I will surely back it up, but if anyone knows if its another problem other than age, Id appreaciate a lead on this one.