Harddisk missing

[Bob I]

That SHOULD BE "The majority will require F2 or Del key.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

F1?!?? Rarely! The majority will require F1 or Del key. Compaqs were
F10. And others were the Esc key.

There's quite an alphabet there...

Del (generic AMI / Award BIOSs)
Ctl+Alt+Esc (old Phoenix, some Acer)
Ctl+Alt+S
F10 (Compaq **, MR-BIOS)
F1 (some IBM)
F2 (Toshiba, some modern generic BIOSs)
Hold down Ins (old ICL)

** Some Compaq have no CMOS Setup code within the BIOS ROM, and
depend on this code to be present in a "special" HD partition. If
this code is not present or accessible, F10 has no effect. The text
cursor changes to block shape and moves to the right of the screen
when this HD-based "special" code runs, and that is when to press F10;
if you never see that cursor effect, the code's missing or bypassed.

Some Toshiba laptops also lack CMOS Setup code in BIOS ROM, and depend
on Windows-based utilities to edit these settings. Unlike dumb-ass
Compaq, they have the clue to trap another key to offer a boot device
menu, and that code does run from ROM.

The reason TSM (This Stuff Matters) is that a pre-file-system malware
can set CMOS A: to None, and thus preclude attempts to boot off
diskette. Now the system will always boot the infected HD first, and
you can't "get in" to kill the malware. If you remove the HD, you
can't get into CMOS Setup to re-define A: or boot order because
there's no CMOS Setup menu availability. If you run the CMOS Setup
from the "special" HD partition, the malware's already active.

 

[Guest]

This is one of the dumbest things I've read in ages.

 

[Guest]

I just started having this problem, as well. The primary and secondard
internal hard disks are the same make, model, size, and age. The are original
to the dual core AMD 64-bit system that was purchased in Novemeber 2005.
Vista 64-Bit Home Premium was intalled clean after both disks were
repartitions and reformated about a month to six weeks ago. The machine had
be running the last available beta version of Vista 32-Bit Ultimate without
issue, prior to that.

For over a week or so now, almost everytime any maintenance function more
complex than a simple cut and paste unmounts the seconadary hard disk.
Rebooting the system remounts the disk. These functions includes disk
cleanup, error-checking, back and restore, and disk defragmenter. Search and
Explore do seem to work without unmounting the drive.

The last successfull backup occurred on 03/12/2007. I do daily backups of
the primary disk to the secondary disk. A RAID configuration was not used
because it was not recommended by the manufacturers of my machine for use
under Vista until certain issued were resolved with Vista. I was doing my
weekly maintenance routine today when I discovered that, to the one, all the
maintenance functions are unmounting secondary hard disk but all reboots are
remounting it with not apparent damage to the files.

The secondard disk also contains support files for Adobe graphics and video
programs such as sample and project backup files but no applications per se.
I download and install all updates when they become available.

External drives do not seem to be affected but they are only on-line for
end-of-week and end-of-month backups. All maintenance functions seem to work
on them without the external drives dismounting.

All power and data hookups are intact and firmly seated in place. The only
physical maintenance that has been require was the replacement of a cooling
fan on the graphics card (by the way, the ATI "fix" does not fix whatever
causes multiple reboots on rebooting).

Anyway, I would think that out two physically identical hard disks the one
that gets the most usage (the primary) would fail first and if the disk is
failing, why would rebooting the machine remount it with no apparent damage?