My second hard drive disappears

[damohonda]

Hello,
I've read about this problem on this forum and various others, but there wasn't an overall solution, and my problem seems slightly different..

The problem I have is with my 2nd Hard drive in windows. (Maxtor SATA 120GB) It’s something that started a few months (I think) after installing windows. It randomly disappears and can only be found after a restart or sometimes it might come back after sleep. I noticed that in the other forums, it disappeared during sleep.
It also disappears nearly all of the time If I try to copy something to the drive.
I never had this problem with Win XP.



I have tried everything they have suggested except for trying a new BIOS, (Although changing the BIOS still might not be the solution) I've emailed ASUS because it seems that they don't have a specific Win 7 bios:
I've
* changed cables
* Swapped cables
* downloaded a hotfix that didn’t work (wouldn't allow me to install)
* changed the hard disk from Idle after 20 minutes to Never.
* Changed the name of the Drive
* Tried different SATA Ports

Doesw anyone have a solution or ideas on how to fix it?
I can send you links to some of the forums if required.

My specs :
ASUS P5GD1-VM motherboard
P4 2.8 Cpu
4GB Ram (3.12 available)
2 X Maxtor Hard drives
Windows 7 32-bit OS

 

[phil22]

First test the drive to make sure it's not a drive fault. Test it with SeaTools for Windows. Click "Downloads" on this page: http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

 

[willard]

I've emailed ASUS because it seems that they don't have a specific Win 7 bios

BIOS has nothing to do with OS. That's the whole point of the BIOS, to provide a way to communicate with the motherboard that's independent of what software will eventually run after startup. Without this, you'd have to reflash the BIOS every time you installed a new OS.

Aside from that, you may have luck screwing around with sleep settings in the BIOS. Don't really know with a board that old, though.

 

[damohonda]

First test the drive to make sure it's not a drive fault. Test it with SeaTools for Windows. Click "Downloads" on this page: http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

I've just tried that, My HDD is ok

 

[damohonda]

BIOS has nothing to do with OS. That's the whole point of the BIOS, to provide a way to communicate with the motherboard that's independent of what software will eventually run after startup. Without this, you'd have to reflash the BIOS every time you installed a new OS.

Aside from that, you may have luck screwing around with sleep settings in the BIOS. Don't really know with a board that old, though.

Can you give me an idea of what I might have to do with the sleep settings?

 

[willard]

Nope, I don't know your board, or what sleep settings were available at the time it was made. I just know that BIOS controls some sleep functions, and it's possible there's a bug or other weird interaction with your current BIOS and sleep in Win7. Things like this are pretty rare, but not impossible.

 

[damohonda]

Nope, I don't know your board, or what sleep settings were available at the time it was made. I just know that BIOS controls some sleep functions, and it's possible there's a bug or other weird interaction with your current BIOS and sleep in Win7. Things like this are pretty rare, but not impossible.

Changing sleep settings don't really make a difference... in fact whilst my drive disappeared, i put it to sleep and it came back again!!