Thread: Hard drive not recognized, then recognized, then not recognized again

Hello,

I have a problem with a Western Digital Raptor 74gb hard drive on an xp machine.

I had not turned on the computer in a month or so and the hard drive was not recognized on start up so it asked for a boot disk. I have never had a problem previously with the drive. I opened the case cleaned out all the dust reattached cables and so on. I restarted and checked the bios and it recognized the drive but received a boot disk error. I downloaded the WD hard drive diagnostics tool but didnt have a CD to burn it onto for a few days. Now that I have the CD to boot for diagnostics a few days later the drive is not recognized once again and I cant get it back. The computer is plugged into a surge protector and the hard drive is spinning up. Is my hard drive fried? That was my first thought until I actually got it to be recognized and I do not understand why it is now not recognized. I made no changes when I turned on the pc from the last time it worked.

The diagnostics tool probably marked bad parts of the hard drive as un-usable, so it worked fine for a bit, my suggestion would be backup anything important, reinstall if it lets you, else time for a new drive or tring using a older drive.