Disappearing Drives

[tattsyrup]

I have 2 SATA HDDs. The computer was on and working fine and then there was some sort of power fluctuation in the house (lights dimmed etc) and the computer switched itself off and it won't reboot. I have got a surge protecting extension lead but it seems too much of a coincidence not to be connected.

 

The computer doesn't appear to be able to find either of the HDDs.

 

I've tried connecting an old IDE HDD that I know works but it wouldn't fire up with that one either. I've also tried both my SATA drives in a friends computer which recognizes the new hardware but wont display it on My Computer but on the hardware manager they appear to be empty. Also my friends SATA drive which works fine on his PC isn't recognised by my system.

 

I've tried to reinstall XP but it gets so far and tells me that there are no Hard drives to install on.

 

I'm hoping that both HDDs & Mobo are not fried but I'm not confident.

 

Please help

 

 

My system is

 

Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 Mobo

Athlon 3200+ processor

2Gb Ram

300gb Maxtor Sata HDD - boot drive

750gb seagate barracuda

GeForce 6600 Graphics Card

EMU 1820 Sound Card

[Dalo Harkin]

Hmm,

thats very odd - have you reset the BIOS - if you put the drives in your friends pc - you have to use the admin tools - then computer management and then disk management to activate the disks.

reset the BIOS and if not then somthing is definately blown

[tattsyrup]

I've flashed the BIOS to the newest version and the PC is now recognising the 2 SATA HDDs on IDE Channel 2 Master and IDE Ch 3 Master.

 

I'm getting as far as the nVidia Boot Agent then am getting an error as below :-

 

PXE-E61: Media Test Failure Check Cable

PXE-M0F: Exiting NVidea Boot Agent

INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

 

I've tried the old IDE drive again ( I know it works in a different system coz I'm using it now) and it gets so far and flashes a fatal blue screen error and powers off and back on and carries on doing that on a loop

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I've flashed the BIOS to the newest version and the PC is now recognising the 2 SATA HDDs on IDE Channel 2 Master and IDE Ch 3 Master.

 

This is not only illogical but impossible Tatty.

 

Are you trying to connect an IDE drive that contains XP (installed on another system) to your pc?

[Seth]

I've flashed the BIOS to the newest version and the PC is now recognising the 2 SATA HDDs on IDE Channel 2 Master and IDE Ch 3 Master.

 

I'm getting as far as the nVidia Boot Agent then am getting an error as below :-

 

PXE-E61: Media Test Failure Check Cable

PXE-M0F: Exiting NVidea Boot Agent

INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

 

I've tried the old IDE drive again ( I know it works in a different system coz I'm using it now) and it gets so far and flashes a fatal blue screen error and powers off and back on and carries on doing that on a loop

 

The blue screen is normal behavior as your using a version of XP that was installed on another computer.

 

Just hook up the Sata drive that has XP on it. Put it on the first channel, then confirm that the bios sees it, and change the boot order to cd first, then the sata drive.

[tattsyrup]

ok so the old IDE drive is a bit of a red herring (but it has always worked for me changing boot drives between mine and my dads computers - both quite old and both IDE only. I'll leave the IDE out of it.

 

The SATA drives are on the SATA sockets that they have always worked fine on. The BIOS is identifying the drives but is telling me that they are IDE channel 2 & 3.

 

Boot order is CD first then my Maxtor 300GB drive.

 

Still getting to the INSERT SYSTEM DISK stage.

 

When I try reinstalling windows it is telling me that I have no hard drives

[Guest Wolfeymole]

What is the exact error message Tatty?

[tattsyrup]

It runs apparently normally until :-

 

verifying DMI Pool Data...........

Boot from CD/DVD:

Boot from CD/DVD:

NVIDIA Boot Agent 201.0462

Copyright © 2001-2004 NVIDIA Corporation

Copyright © 1997- 2000 Intel Corporation

 

Then it hangs for about 2 minutes and comes up with

 

PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, Check Cable

PXE-M0F:Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK & PRESS ENTER

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Whatever drive your trying to boot from Tatty does not contain an operating system or if it does then the mbr is damaged.

 

Have you actually tried changing the boot order to the hard drive?

[tattsyrup]

It certainly used to contain an OS. I can't install a new one as it tells me there are no drives to install to.

 

Is there any way I can find out which components are at the heart of the problem as I only want to replace the fied ones?

 

My seagate drive has never had windows on it - Should I just be able to put this into another computer and off it goes?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Forget about that old IDE drive and the Seagate, does the Maxtor have windows on do you think?

 

I'm a bit lost to what's got what on to be frank.

[Dalo Harkin]

the error you are getting is relating to Nvidia - this will either be the chipset or the GPU (graphics card) check the GPU is properly installed and that it has power.

failing that their is something wrong with the Nforce chipset

[RandyL]

Tattsyrup you are really confusing us. Can you start at the beginning please? Please be very specific.

 

As near as I can tell you originally had two SATA drives. Remove all the drives but one. Set the boot order in the BIOS to CD first. Reinstall Windows via the XP full disk on that drive.

 

We can take it from there.

 

It does make no sense that EIDE is showing SATA. That's impossible. It makes me wonder too if you are trying to hook up a drive that already has XP on it and expect it to boot from that drive.

 

What does it say on your XP install disks?

[Dalo Harkin]

Ok - it is weird but it's not impossible - some cheaper boards use the SATA through an interface that uses like a second IDE channel - it's complicated to explain but they can be on an IDE channel - its very odd

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Do you have something like this that your hooking to Tatty?

 

http://images.pcimicro.com/www.pcimicro.com/SY-IDE-SATA2.jpg

[Dalo Harkin]

Ok there are 4 things that could be happening -

1 - you are using an Nforce MOBO and its toast :eek:

2 - you are using the device that Wolfey posted.

3 - you have a MOBO with more than 2 SATA ports and the MOBO uses IDE channels that are on the board as an interface between the SATA and the IDE.

4 - the GPU is not being detected as its not receiving power or is not plugged in the PCI/AGP slot properly

[tattsyrup]

OK, I'm up and running.:D

 

Didn't do anything different this time but for some reason I could reinstall Windows onto my MAXTOR drive.

 

I still cant get the system to show me the Seagate drive. The Admin Tools Disk Management tool shows that Seagate is there but all the space is shown as unallocated. I have the opten to initialise it but i think that that would reformat the drive - is that right?

 

I don't want to lose the data coz the first photos of my new baby are on there somewhere. I know that the data is still on the disk coz I've done a scan with some recovery software and that looks to have found just about everything.

 

Is there any way to "initialise" the drive without reformatting ? - if not I will have to buy the recovery software before I reformat.

 

 

Thanks for all your posts so far.

 

Just as a matter for info - I'm not using one of those bits of kit that moley posted, the drives are plugged straight into the onboard SATA ports on the MOBO. The BIOS still shows them as IDE 2 &3 but what the hell it seems to be working.

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Well using recovery software seems the only road to me Tatty, which software did you consider by the way?

[tattsyrup]

Thanks for all your help

 

I've done a couple of scans with demo versions - one with Paretologic and one with Power Data Recovery. The Pareto one looks better to me as it's identifying the file names and the former directories rather than just a long list of "recovered image file00001.jpg" etc. It'll make it much easier to find the bits I want as there are about 15000 files in the drive.

 

Thanks for all your help :D

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I'd recommend this if you want to obtain them via paid Software.

 

Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files

 

Seth also recommends this software.