Resolved-Lost my E drive, issues starting up

[evo-lution ßÄЯ]

Name: Evo- Lution

Rank: BAR

Type of issue: (Software, Hardware, Steam, Not sure) Hardware

Brief Description of Issue: So i turned on my pc today and hopped onto DoDs when the next map began to load it froze and shut itself down saying it cant find a file to right to and to find one with that privilege. i opened my computer and my E drive has simply vanished. I have not changed anything since i started using it and when i went to restart the system had to recreate files due to them not being found... kinda worried seeing as this thing is only 3 weeks old. any help would be amazing.

***Medical Supply Staff ONLY Below this line***

Current Status: (Researching, Pending Reply, Resolved, Unresolved) Resolved

Main Technician: Pvt. Cutts

Supporting Technician: Cpl. Bryant

Edit Cpl Bryant::formatting

Edited June 5, 2012 by Bryant 1st MRB

[Bryant 1st MRB]

very first thing to check is all of the plugs in the computer, my solid state dissapears sometimes and i jusy give the plug a wiggle and it works. Because it is new it wouldnt be un common for it to become un plugged.

[Lafy BAR]

Have you checked in computer management to see if the drive is still there?

What is the exact model of motherboard you have? Revision 1 P67 based motherboards have a design flaw that causes the SATA controller (hard drive controller) to cease functioning

[Cutts]

Bryant is quite right there. First thing to do is check things are firmly plugged in... the number of times this has caused me an issue is uncountable!

2 other generally helpful things to do when your HDD appears to have died:

1) Do you see in the BIOS?

You will want to look in the BIOS settings to see what it reports. This will depend on your motherboard, generally.

Normally you would press and hold "Del" at the beginning of startup (when the memory checks are happening) and this will take you into your BIOS settings.

Then navigate the menus to see if it is registering the SATA device... if you see the right number of HDDs there, then at least something is working correctly!

If the BIOS or SATA controller doesn't report its presence, most likely you have faulty hardware (it could be a firmware fault, but since it worked before this

is unlikely).

2) Does it work in another machine?

The next best thing to do, is to carefully remove the drive and install it into another machine, that you know has a fully working motherboard and SATA controller.

This assumes you have a spare machine somewhere around, or a friend who's willing to let you mess with theirs!

If it still doesn't work, you probably have a faulty disk, but if it does work, then the fault is likely to lie with your new motherboard.

(Note: a lot of this is manufacturer dependent, so might not be as straight-forward as I have described... some SATA controllers have their own menu system that

can be activated after the BIOS startup, so you might find what you need there)

If these don't help, could you post the make/model of both your motherboard and HDD, and also the version of the BIOS firmware that you are currently using

and maybe that will shed some light on it?

One more question, are you absolutely certain you (or your little brother, if you have one) didn't change anything? I can't really think of anything other than

altering BIOS settings and firmware that would stop a functional HDD from working, these days (unless it is actually broken).

Edited June 5, 2012 by Cutts 1st MRB

[evo-lution ßÄЯ]

So I checked my bios the first time and the drive wasnt showing up. I checked al the cabling and still nothing so i reset and unplugged everything plugged into it including my phone and my headphones which have a usb plug to power them. and when i rechecked the BIOS it popped up so i dont know what was wrong but it seems to be working. will have to look into it more but alas thank you.

[Cutts]

Cool! Good to hear its resolved... probably.

I had a recurring issue with my old machine where my RAID pair of hdds would just not show up when the machine booted, about 10% of the time.

Simply rebooting would normally fix it... googling it, most people suggested I needed new firmware, but I never managed to find one that fixed my

issue, but I had a fairly good workaround so I never needed to.

So, it might be an issue that pops up again for you, but hopefully not!

Let us know if it does - it might be a known issue fixed by a recent firmware update.