Sata drive no.2 goes missing.

[Gerryx1]

Hi
After adding a sata dvd writer, whic became the 3rd sata drive, the second ( Seagate barracuda 500gb)goes missing. It shows up in bios and 'device manager' , but not in 'disk management' or 'my computer. System: win. xp pro. home, gigabyte motherboard, amd dual core processors. The missing drive is partitioned: 'new voume': F, G, and H. I would appreciate your help.
Gerryx1. :-/

[hughv]

Motherboard model number?

[Gerryx1]

Hi Hughv, thanks for contact. My mobo. is: Gigabyte GA-K8NF - 9. nVidia nForce4-4xPCI K8 Socket 939. 4 Sata 1 ports. I tried switching the missing drive to dif. ports and changing cables, removing the Sony dvd writer, but no joy.
Gerryx1

[hughv]

Is there a RAID setup involved? What's the BIOS setting for these ports?
My board has 4 SATA ports, but doesn't support SATA Optical drives.
I can't tell from your manual whether yours does or not.

[Gerryx1]

There is no Raid setup involved. I have limited experience of working in BIOS, what I have found, in the CMOS window is: NV Serial ATA 1 Enabled; SATA 1 class code: 0101; NV SATA 2 Enabled, SATA 2 class code: 0101. The Sony DRU-865S DVD writer seems to be working well. All RAID connections are Disabled.

[hughv]

Look in the BIOS under "Integrated Peripherals" and make sure the SATA secondaries are enabled.

[Gerryx1]

Under 'Integrated Peripherals' I have noted the following: NV IDE/SATA RAID function Disabled = D
NV Serial ATA1 enabled = E , This is written in white, then, in lowlight with an X to the left of them is the following display: Serial - ATA 1 Primary RAID - D, Serial ATA 1 Secondary RAID - D. The same info is given for the Serial ATA 2 Primary and Secondary Raid ie. Disabled. As these are in lowlights you can't select them, uless maybe some other parameter is changed. I hope this is of some help. Thanks.

[hughv]

The manual just isn't clear about this.
Try connecting both HDs to:
The same channel.
Different channels.
How are they connected now?
It's possible you need a BIOS update.

[Gerryx1]

I agree, the manual in most cases just states the obvious. I haven't tried shifting the connections yet, You've lost with: 'connecting the two HDs to same channel'. Is 'channel' another term for port, or something different. I just got the following from Gigabyte Support: "Test with the latest BIOS update. Use QcFlash Utility and set load optimized default in the main CMOS menu when completed". Setting the 'Load optimized Default', that is new to me, could you explain what is involved?

[hughv]

Your ports are shown in the manual as SATA 1 Primary, Secondary) and the same for SATA 2(P,S).
Again, the manual isn't clear, but I'd assume these ports are adjacent.
I should also mention that you may be able to set up a single disk RAID as I have on my board. It's usually called RAID 0 + 1.
Set one pair to RAID and use the RAID setup to designate it.
For "Optimized Defaults", open the BIOS, press F7. These are the fail safe defaults that reset any changes you may have made.

[Gerryx1]

To catchup: I've been in the horrors of BIOS updating - with no succes so far. The Gigabyte BIOS D/L page is not very helpful as to the exact BIOS file to D/L, it gives 6 options, I chose the 1st one. but when I "Y'd "Update BIOS from Floppy" , it scanned and reported: "File ID Check ... ERROR" I am now waiting for BiosAgent Plus to (h'fully) come up with the right file. Your comments on a Raid setup are interestin, I haven't had time time to gert my head 'round Raid yet, will delve into the manual.
Thanks again.

[Gerryx1]

To cut a long story short: when I updated the Bios my drv was showing as Dynamic instead of Basic. and as [unreadable][/ I discovered GetDataBack - a pro program which will contact any hd and recover contents. You can download it ad a 'demo' verison and use it to contact and read out the disk condition/contents. Then it you wnt to recov cnts. you buy the prog. They would need to be valuable as it costs around 60GBP. The contents of my drv was programs which I had on disk so the cost didn't arise, but I new that my drv was working OK' by ri clckng you had the option of changing back to a 'basic' drv, which I did and then repartiotoned in 3; then reformatted each prtion, individually.should have done this before partitiong but didn't know at that time that it needd prtng. I done some video editing and capture with Pinnacle Std 12. today and all seems well - tuch wud. Thanks for the suggestions, they got off to a start.
Gerry

[pcguy]

To the orginal poster. Is this hard drive a Seagate model? Certain Seagate model of hard drives have had problems with disappearing from the bios upon reboot or bootup even though the drive was working find the previous day.

If indeed this is the case the only way to retrieve the data is to contact Seagate support. If it was determined that the problem is due to their known firmware then Seagate's data recovery company will fix the drive and return it to you no charge.

For more information, including a Firmware flash for the affected drives that are still working see http://snipurl.com/d0e4f . There is also a 50+ page thread on this matter at http://snipurl.com/d0e5i .

[Gerryx1]

Thanks, yes it's the Barracauda 7200 11 500gb 32mb NCQ, so it's a fairly new one. I downloaded Sea Tools which, you probably know is Seagate's recovery software but, neither from floppy or CD would it start up, it froze at the start up page and I couldn't input . I was wondering if a firmware update was in order. But it has made wary of connecting or disconnecting Sata drives.

[pcguy]

Well if it is not showing up in BIOS then you have to contact Seagate support since the drive can not be flashed if the bios does not see it and has to be repaired by Seagate's data recovery service.

[Gerryx1]

Well if it is not showing up in BIOS then you have to contact Seagate support since the drive can not be flashed if the bios does not see it and has to be repaired by Seagate's data recovery service.

No, the problem is solved, I thought you wer just trying to update me on something. The whole explanation is the posts