Re: Now you see it, now you don't

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

"Nanny" <catwomanspamless@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:42eb429b$0$58601$dbd45001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> When I bought my new pc with XP SP2 I added a second hard drive(FAT 32)
> that I'd already used for a while in my old pc, and that contains all my
> data, photo's, music etc. Everything worked fine, but over the past month
> something strange is happening. From one moment to the other Windows loses
> sight of that second drive. Sometimes restarting (in every possible way)
> helps, sometimes not. Sometimes the drive disappears when I'm saving
> something to it, sometimes I can save. Does anyone have an idea about what
> can be wrong ?
>
> Nanny

One thing that can be wrong is that the drive is simply failing. Another
thing that can be wrong is that the cabling is loose or inadequate; check
and possibly replace the ribbon cable (with an 80-conductor) and drive power
cable.

In the BIOS verify that SMART reporting is turned ON for that drive. When
the drive disappears, restart from power-off and watch for error messages.
If any SMART error messages appear, replace any drives referenced -
promptly.

Regardless, you probably want to back up the contents of that drive to a new
drive, very soon. New drives are cheap, and very very much cheaper than
data recovery services.

HTH
-pk


.

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