[fluorophore]

I upgraded to WinXP (not a clean install, just the standard upgrade.. I know.. dumb) on my WinME machine and decided to add an old 30 GB HD for extra storage. Both drives are FAT32, and for a while it worked fine.

Then a while back, the system couldn't find the second drive. The icon shows up (i.e., assigns it a drive letter D: ), but when I try to access the drive (or any files located on D: ) it tells me the drive isn't formatted. I reformatted the whole thing as FAT32 and it worked fine for a few months, now it's telling me it isn't formatted again. Usually the problem appears after Scan Disk pops up on a reboot. I know I'm toast when that happens. I don't know what is prompting it to flip out, but it seems to be persistent.

There has to be a way to fix it. Norton SystemWorks couldn't touch it (no big surprise), but there must be a way to reestablish the connection. I think it's a minor bug but don't know where to start. I read on Google about a guy that used some utility to set the drive type as FAT32 and that worked for him, but not sure how he did it exactly.

Thoughts?

 

[Dan O]

The drive may be going bad. I recommend you go to the manufacture's support web page of the drive and download their disk checker, which does a low level verification of the status of the drive. When you boot the drive brand is displayed with the model.

 

[fluorophore]

The drive may be going bad. I recommend you go to the manufacture's support web page of the drive and download their disk checker, which does a low level verification of the status of the drive. When you boot the drive brand is displayed with the model.

Went to the Maxtor site and downloaded their scan utility. Did a full scan. Came up clean.

I'm thinking this is an XP related problem. Is there any way to re-establish connection with the drive without reformatting?

 

[icecube]

Put the d drive on another machine and see if the data is still there, if it is, the OS could be suspect.

your biggest problem is confidence in the system--Windows Mil was a horrible OS

Further, check the capacitors on the motherboard--are they ouzing or leaking

and last, the power supply you might consider replacing it if its over 3 years old.

There are basicly 3 interactions motherboard, ide cable, power to the harddrive, the software coordinates everything in a consistent reoccuring pattern. A harddrive winking on and off sounds like a hardware issue but it is conceivable that its a software issue.

 

[crjdriver]

Generally when a drive is "not found or shows that it needs formatting" it is a problem with the drive itself; specifically the mbr. As a test, boot into the repair console and change to the suspect drive. Type "fixmbr" without the quotes. If the drive is recognized now, it is failing.