HELP ! my hard drives went offline and xp doesnt see them anymore

[SNAAKE]

 

this is extremly random btw, the hard drives are there and I can see them on bios screen but windows cant load them. is there anything I can do here ?? included screenshot.

[Grasshopper]

At what point does windows stop loading?

If it's random (i.e. sometimes is boots, sometimes it doesn't) then it's probably a hardware issue. If that's the case then you should back up your hard disk next time you're able to boot.

[SNAAKE]

i am able to boot fine but windows doesnt see any of the drives except the master boot drive. they show up in bios screen though. not sure whats going on here...

[headkaze]

Are they listed in Disk Management? Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management.

[Red 5]

It could be the controller.

Get one of these if you have IDE and then hook it up USB to make sure.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232001

If you have SATA the you could use,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

Jon

[SNAAKE]

Are they listed in Disk Management? Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management.

they show up there but says "missing". I tried right click then reactivate disk but it doesnt work. thing is I had another hard drive installed but not connected. that hard drive has spare space if ever need to back something up. I just conected that and its working fine.

any other input ??

It could be the controller.

Get one of these if you have IDE and then hook it up USB to make sure.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232001

If you have SATA the you could use,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

Jon

so my onboard sata might have stopped working or something ??
I have a sata card with 2 ports and one of my hard drive was connected to that and that one doesnt work either. BUT as I mentioned above, I had another hard drive which was not connected before, I connected that one now to the pci/sata card and it works fine.

I guess cant even guess whats going on here..it may have been the automatic update windows installs. I think I had something this morning but I am not sure how to undo the update.

[Red 5]

I guess cant even guess whats going on here..it may have been the automatic update windows installs. I think I had something this morning but I am not sure how to undo the update.

System Restore. But do not blame me if it hoses everthing else. I have used it before with no problems, but this is Windows we are talking about.

[SNAAKE]

tried system restore before making the thread(...thats a shocker lol)
it doesnt even wanna undo my last restore. reinstalling windows as an option I guess. even though I have 90203492034293 bazillion things installed/configured here. I'd hate to do everything over..that and I need to back up crap load of stuff.

any other suggestions before I bite the bullet ?

[headkaze]

Sorry I didn't realise you posted an image there. It would seem unlikely that both your drives have died at the same time (unless there was some power surge that screwed them both). You can test that theory by trying a drive in another PC. I would also try unplugging them both and then just booting up with one HDD at a time. That should also force you to check the cables are in tight. I would also consider the power supply as a possible culprit.

[loadman]

Sorry I didn't realise you posted an image there. It would seem unlikely that both your drives have died at the same time (unless there was some power surge that screwed them both). You can test that theory by trying a drive in another PC. I would also try unplugging them both and then just booting up with one HDD at a time. That should also force you to check the cables are in tight. I would also consider the power supply as a possible culprit.

I 2nd that approach

[SNAAKE]

hmnm..they show up in bios though

I just reinstalled windows..here is what I am seeing now. I will try to connect the drives in another xp based computer later on and see whats up.....

[headkaze]

That confirms my suspicion that it's a hardware issue not a Windows issue. You can see your drives in BIOS but that doesn't tell us if the drive itself has died or even if the controller card has been fried. You need to get serious about the possibility that your drives have died. There are some recovery techniques you can try after you test them on another PC. One involves finding a working HDD that is the same brand etc and putting it's controller card on the damaged drive. That will rule out a fried controller card. I was a PC technician  a few years ago and I've used this method before to save a HDD that had it's controller card fried in a lightning storm.

[patrickmaher]

I notice all 3 problem drives are listed as dynamic. Can you give some info on why you have them setup as dynamic?
Did you have them setup to have 1 drive letter span all 3 drives?

It's unlikely that all 3 drives died at the same time while your primary drive is fine. It is possible that 1 drive has a problem and that has broken your dynamic (RAID) setup.

Are all 3 drives SATA? Are they all on the same controller? Does your controller offer RAID abilities that you are using. (Although it appears you were using windows to do software RAID, most likely)

Is this a system that has been working and then the drives stopped showing up or is the boot drive just recently being setup and you are trying to carry over the 3 drives from a previous setup?
I assume you are running XP Pro.

http://konstantin.vassilev.name/?p=86
The intro on this article sounds like the problem you are having. Although I wouldn't advise following the instructions there unless you really understand them.

[SNAAKE]

uh..I wasnt too sure what I was doing when I formatted them. worked fine though.

anyway good news, the drives arent dead. the partition was messed up. I used a freware tool called "disk check"(wiki is godly) and it rewrote the partition or boot sector(or something) without losing any of the data. now should I back everything up on a seperate drive and format these again ? all my drives show up under computer management but I still have 3 more icons with the "hard drlive offline" message(now I am seeing 6 hard drives, 3 working and other 3 offline but they are the same drive lol)