my computer doesn't detect any more both secondary hard drives and DVD drive?

[bluealvita]

Hi all,

My hard drives and DVD are somehow on strike. All of a sudden, my
computer doesn't detect any more both two secondary hard drives and DVD
drive. Under device manager, they can't be found any more. Also, the
BIOS page only shows the secondary master - Auto and secondary slave -
Auto rather than showing details of the drives.

It happened when I turned on my computer when I came home. Nothing was
done before that. It was resting at home whole day. There was some
message pop up during first booting saying something like ID fails.

What should I do solve these issues?

Thank you very much.

Best regards,

Tuffy

 

[Guest]

Do you have the latest BIOS? Did you update your BIOS recently? Have you
tried new or other IDE cables? Did you try 1 drive at a time on the working
controller or even on a different unit? Have you downloaded the HD's diag
tool and ran it?

What have you done?

 

[Malke]

Hi all,

My hard drives and DVD are somehow on strike. All of a sudden, my
computer doesn't detect any more both two secondary hard drives and DVD
drive. Under device manager, they can't be found any more. Also, the
BIOS page only shows the secondary master - Auto and secondary slave -
Auto rather than showing details of the drives.

It happened when I turned on my computer when I came home. Nothing was
done before that. It was resting at home whole day. There was some
message pop up during first booting saying something like ID fails.

What should I do solve these issues?

Since the computer is not recognizing more than one drive at the very basic
level, your motherboard has probably died. This is a hardware problem and
has nothing to do with Windows. A few things to try:

1. With the computer unplugged, open the case and reseat the power cables
and the drive cables.

2. If that doesn't work, swap out the drive cables with known working ones.

3. If that doesn't work, it won't hurt to swap out the power supply for a
known-working one.

4. If that doesn't work, you can test the drives in another machine to make
sure they work. It would be a rather unlikely coincidence that all of your
various drives died at the same time, but I include this to be thorough.

5. If all that doesn't work, your motherboard has died and needs to be
replaced.

Malke

 

[Anna]

Do you have the latest BIOS? Did you update your BIOS recently? Have you
tried new or other IDE cables? Did you try 1 drive at a time on the
working
controller or even on a different unit? Have you downloaded the HD's diag
tool and ran it?

What have you done?

Tuffy:
Following up on Steve's response...

I assume from the description of your system that besides your boot HDD you
have two secondary HDDs that you presumably use for backup/storage purposes
and a single optical drive. And that notwithstanding the problem you're
having re the non-recognition of those two secondary HDDs together with your
optical drive, your system boots without incident and functions without
problems. Is that right?

It doesn't sound possible that you would simultaneously have two defective
HDDs together with a defective optical drive, so I would forget about
Steve's suggestion (at least for the moment) re using the hard drive
diagnostic tool. But there's no harm in doing so if you want.

Also, I don't really see a need for a BIOS upgrade in this situation, so
pass on that.

What do you see, if anything, in Disk Management (Start > right-click My
Computer > Manage > Computer Management > Disk Management) re those three
missing drives? Nothing?

I assume you're working with a desktop computer. Do you know how to get
inside the case to make various cable connections if there's a need to? Are
you familiar with the components that make up your computer and do you think
you're experienced enough to change components should that need arise? And
tell us the make & model of your computer.

And once again -- besides the problem you're experiencing with those missing
drives, your system boots straightaway & functions properly with no other
problems, right? Aside from that first message you received upon booting up,
no other messages now appear, right?

And repeating Steve's question "What have you done?"... Prior to this
problem arising you made no software/hardware changes in your system of any
kind that might account for this problem, right? It happened, as you
indicate, just "out of the blue", so to speak. Is that right?
Anna