Hard drive invisible after long "power off"
My hard drive (Western Digital 40GB WD400EB) is not visible after a long
"power off" situation, I mean when the server is off for a few hours. My system is a Windows 2000 server SP 4. Ive' noticed 3 things when my drive is invisible in explorer; 1. The drive is visible in the BIOS 2. The drive is visible in Device Manager 3. The drive is INVISIBLE in Disk Managment The only way for me to solve it is by disconnecting the IDE cable to the drive, rconnecting it and rebooting the system. Yes, weird... Looks like the drive is in some sort of locked state... If the drive is visible, then everything works fine; I can read AND write data. The drive doesn't contain WD's EZ-Bios. I've formatted and partitioned the drive a few time, but that didn't solve anything. Btw, the drive is Master on IDE-2 and contains no operating system, only data. IDE1 contains two WD drives, of which one contains the operating system. I looked for days on Google and the web (including Western Digital's support) but couldn't find any solution. Thanks in advance |
"Peter" wrote in message
.. . My hard drive (Western Digital 40GB WD400EB) is not visible after a long "power off" situation, I mean when the server is off for a few hours. My system is a Windows 2000 server SP 4. Ive' noticed 3 things when my drive is invisible in explorer; 1. The drive is visible in the BIOS 2. The drive is visible in Device Manager 3. The drive is INVISIBLE in Disk Managment The only way for me to solve it is by disconnecting the IDE cable to the drive, rconnecting it and rebooting the system. Yes, weird... Looks like the drive is in some sort of locked state... If the drive is visible, then everything works fine; I can read AND write data. The drive doesn't contain WD's EZ-Bios. I've formatted and partitioned the drive a few time, but that didn't solve anything. Btw, the drive is Master on IDE-2 and contains no operating system, only data. IDE1 contains two WD drives, of which one contains the operating system. I looked for days on Google and the web (including Western Digital's support) but couldn't find any solution. Thanks in advance By any chance do you have that drive set to power down when idle? I've had problems, although not recently, with SCSI drives that were slow to start up after being spun down causing the OS to declare them missing in action. Worth a look anyway... -- John McGaw [Knoxville, TN, USA] Return address will not work. Please reply in group or through my website: http://johnmcgaw.com |
Thanks John,
I already had a look at it, but I might give it another try; maybe I missed something. The weird things is that the system doesn't cause me any problems if I power it down for a few minutes, only after a few hours weird things are happening... like something electrical is discharging... |
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 18:07:15 -0400, "Peter" wrote:
Thanks John, I already had a look at it, but I might give it another try; maybe I missed something. The weird things is that the system doesn't cause me any problems if I power it down for a few minutes, only after a few hours weird things are happening... like something electrical is discharging... Reckon it could be the cmos battery? Bill |
Reckon it could be the cmos battery? Bill I hardly doubt that, since all BIOS settings are unchanged when the system was off for hours |
Sounds like the drive is not ready when the system comes up. I know
multiple SCSI drives can take time to power up on a SCSI chain but yours is IDE. Never heard of this. I would run the manufacturers diags from Western Digital to verify that the drive is okay. Try changing the IDE cable if possible. Try moving to another IDE port. See if the problem moves around. Please provide more info like the setup. Is it master on the 2ndary IDE with a CD or CD-R as slave ? When did this start? You just added the drive?? Has it been running stable for a long time? Make any changes ??? hardware or software. Any recent serious crashes. It could be Win 200 acting up but I don't know 2000. Could just be the drive is hooped or the motherboard. "Peter" wrote in message .. . My hard drive (Western Digital 40GB WD400EB) is not visible after a long "power off" situation, I mean when the server is off for a few hours. My system is a Windows 2000 server SP 4. Ive' noticed 3 things when my drive is invisible in explorer; 1. The drive is visible in the BIOS 2. The drive is visible in Device Manager 3. The drive is INVISIBLE in Disk Managment The only way for me to solve it is by disconnecting the IDE cable to the drive, rconnecting it and rebooting the system. Yes, weird... Looks like the drive is in some sort of locked state... If the drive is visible, then everything works fine; I can read AND write data. The drive doesn't contain WD's EZ-Bios. I've formatted and partitioned the drive a few time, but that didn't solve anything. Btw, the drive is Master on IDE-2 and contains no operating system, only data. IDE1 contains two WD drives, of which one contains the operating system. I looked for days on Google and the web (including Western Digital's support) but couldn't find any solution. Thanks in advance |
I solved it!!
I opened my computer, took the drive out, took it in my right arm, moved in front of a wall and like a baseball pitcher I threw it... a big bang... the thing was definitely gone this time... went to the store... bought a new hard drive and everything works again! I didn't even bother about the ****ing warranty! No more Western Digital for me... **** drives! (too many bad experiences) And my Server? It runs more smoothly than ever! ha! |
Peter wrote:
I solved it!! I opened my computer, took the drive out, took it in my right arm, moved in front of a wall and like a baseball pitcher I threw it... a big bang... the thing was definitely gone this time... went to the store... bought a new hard drive and everything works again! I didn't even bother about the ****ing warranty! No more Western Digital for me... **** drives! (too many bad experiences) And my Server? It runs more smoothly than ever! ha! Um, not need for the swearing. I used WD drives in my old Amiga, the one was fine, but the second one started to have problems after a few months. I now use Seagate when i can, they may be a little slower than some, but they are reliable. Maxtor have also improved a lot, there was a time when they was noisy and a bit unrealiable. But i know someone who got a maxtor and been using it for almost 3 years now and no problems what so ever. |
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