I have a system with the following cofniguration: Intel Pentium 4 3.0Ghz HT Intel D945GCCR Motherboard 2 GB DDR2 SD RAM 667 Mhz Windows XP Pro 3 hard disks - Seagate 80GB SATA, Western Digital 320Gb SATA and a Seagate 500Gb SATA. All are 7200rpm ones. The problem is with my 500gb one. One morning when I booted up my sys, it din't boot properly.There were no problems till then. First a steady cursor came at the top left of the monitor. Then after some 30-45 seconds, the BIOS screen came up (which usually comes within a few secs). Then the Microsoft Windows XP loading screen comes up and it takes nearly 5 min at this stage. Then only did my computer get into windows. At this point both my 320 as well as 500 HDD's were not detected. When i restarted and checked in the BIOS also, they were not shown. I unplugged the SATA cables from those two hard disks, then my computer boots up properly without any delay or the cursor showing up. Now I tried connecting only the 320 HDD alongwith the 80gb (which contains the OS) and it worked fine. When i try connecting the 500 HDD, again the same problem comes up. Slow booting and then when I get into windows both the 320 and 500 hdd's don't show up. Please help me with this situation. I have a lot of data on the 500gb hdd and really need to access it badly. I got no clue as to how to handle this situation. Thanks
It does sound like the drive is on its way out! You could try running chkdsk on the drive to see if it helps. You can also try one of the Hard Disk Diagnostic Tools from Ultimate Boot CD - Overview
