hi, i installed a new 20gb hard drive a few months ago and it was working fine, on friday i was using the computer as i normaly would and everything seemed ok. but today i turned on my pc and hardly any of the desktop or system tray icons had loaded up and the computer was extremely slow, i restarted it and it made no difference so i booted it up to the last working point or something and still some icons hadnt loaded up. when i clicked on my computer i noticed that only drive C:\ was showing and drive E:\ had vanished

i have been on device manager and it says the driver is working properly
i have tried updating driver but it could not find updates

has the IDE cable come loose?

it now detects the HD but it says it is not formatted do you want to format it now? when i click no it doesnt open and i do not want to lose any data is there any way of getting the HD open without formatting it?

i dont think it has come loose because it is detecting it now

can you try in safe mode?

Thanks brain_damage i have tried in safe mode, nothing happens. in normal mode desktop does not load properly and no programs work. I disconected the 20gb HD (the one i added a few months back) and windows loaded ok but i kept getting error messages when i try clicking on things e.g help and support saying there are not enough resorses to load this application or something.
Also, i have tried a system restore but this has made no difference, when i took the case off my pc, i found that the hard drives and lead were quite warm. is this normal? and i could smell burning coming from the drive but only quite faint, is this a sign to stop using it? I have to start my computer in de-bugging mode or to the last known good configuration for it to work at all!!! i am starting to get worried now because i have only had the computer for 1 and a half years

A burning smell is quite disconcerting, and the source better be found quick. But be aware that somethings dust from a fan (usually the PSU) comes lose and can be burnt, giving the impression that a part of the PC might be on its way out.

One of the things your could look into is more fans. This will increase the air flow within the PC, but be aware it might require a high powered PSU to make sure that all the device and fans can be powered.

The host IDE ribbon is a bit of a curious one, as the ribbon shouldn't get hot under normal conditions. The only way it normally gets hot is if its in contact with something that is (i.e. the CPU fan).

Other than that your hard drive could be on its way out, and the only way to keep the data is by trying to keep it cold and getting access to it, via your PC (or another PC), either internally, as a slave or externally via USB (http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...=38160&doy=9m5 or http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...subcat_uid=242)



Regards
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Meck

Thanks Meckanix i can't acsess the harddrive at all to back any data up. it is already the slave drive in my pc. i have just formatted it and now i can acess the drive but i have lost all the data that was on it. Luckily it had no important data on it. Just a bit of software and about 2000 music tracks!!! this should be no problem because i still have all the disks. Im just bothered about the time it will take to get it all back on!! i think my computer is ok now and i will let you know if it gets hot again.

If you want the data back there are various file recovery programs that can do it for you (i.e. File Scavenger).

They should be able to find the data, as it hasn't really gone.


Regards
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Meck