Hey guys - just had a question for those of you who are familiar with the symptoms of hard drive failures.I have a hard drive that keeps "disappearing" from my computer (i.e. not showing up in My Computer, etc). I also am experiencing some very long pauses that were not happening before. I have three drives - my main drive, which Windows Vista is on, along with most of my regular programs, a storage drive where I keep all my videos and software stuff, and a drive dedicated to game installations. The game hard drive is the one that is disappearing. Does that probably mean that it is failing/no good?Thanks for your help!Todd

Hey guys - just had a question for those of you who are familiar with the symptoms of hard drive failures.I have a hard drive that keeps "disappearing" from my computer (i.e. not showing up in My Computer, etc). I also am experiencing some very long pauses that were not happening before. I have three drives - my main drive, which Windows Vista is on, along with most of my regular programs, a storage drive where I keep all my videos and software stuff, and a drive dedicated to game installations. The game hard drive is the one that is disappearing. Does that probably mean that it is failing/no good?Thanks for your help!Todd

go into your POWER PROPERTIES and kill the HARD DISK power save features.. tell them NEVER to shut down

go into your POWER PROPERTIES and kill the HARD DISK power save features.. tell them NEVER to shut down

That setting has always been on Never. Problem is that I haven't had this problem in the past - it's just now starting to do this. And the hard drive doesn't show up at all, not even right after starting up the computer.

That setting has always been on Never. Problem is that I haven't had this problem in the past - it's just now starting to do this. And the hard drive doesn't show up at all, not even right after starting up the computer.

Then I would suspect1. The cable is loose.. either power or data with SATA usually the data as they can be loose to being with depending on the cable manufacture2. The drive is truly becoming or has become defectiveWhen checking power and data cables DO NOT unplug them with the system on or plugged into wthe wall.. shut down, unplug from AC, hit the tower power button a few times to discharge the PSU and then open the tower and check connections

Also , To confirm that your HDD data integegrity is still OK, run chkdsk. This is windows system app that you can launch from properties tab of any drive.This will reboot your pc, and check the drive for errors before windows is launched.If checkdsk says your disk is OK, then your back to looking at Nicks's options above. Cause if chkdsk says OK, then problem is power etc related.By the way, you may want to get Acronis Home 2009, Helps back up your drives to seperate HDD. Quite Easy To Use.

Slowness + drive randomly becoming inaccessible = definitely drive failure.To be 100% sure you could download Hiren's boot disk (burn to cd) and boot, run MHDD (menu option 6, 8, 8, 4) and test your HD. Any colored sectors = bad drive.

Slowness + drive randomly becoming inaccessible = definitely drive failure.To be 100% sure you could download Hiren's boot disk (burn to cd) and boot, run MHDD (menu option 6, 8, 8, 4) and test your HD. Any colored sectors = bad drive.

Thanks guys... sounds like its about time to get one of those Raptors!