Slave Drive unrecognizable

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DeltaT

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I came home form my parents house Christmas night and found that my computer had attempted to mysteriously reboot its self. It did not complete the boot process. Had a message saying "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE". I just shut everything down and broke out my laptop and started searching for answers. I tied booting again, and got to safe mode, it hung after mui.sys (i think). I started reading about those problems and started pulling everything out of my PCI slots, disonected my USB and CD, DVD, and slave drives.

I then went into Bios, loaded optimized settings and restarted. It booted! I was relieved. Well, then I plugged in my CD and DVD. it booted. Plugged in my Sound card and slave, and the BIOS hung at detecting IDE devices. So I unplugged my slave, and it booted. Obviously there is a problem with my slave. It is a WD2500 (250gb) running with a AMD 2200+, 512 ddr 2700, master is a Maxtor 120, all on a SOYO dragon 400 (i think) VIA chipset.

1) Is the drive ruined? Could it be the boot sector or something that could be repaired.
2) Is their any way to recover anything off of it? It is all my mp3s and movies (all 250 GB). I've heard that there are programs that can recover this with damaged boot sectors but I don't understand how this would work if I can't even have this drive hooked up to my computer without it trying to restart.

Any insight to this problem would be greatly appreciated. Sorry about the length, but the more info, the better. Thanks again.

DeltaT
 
does a "slave" drive have a boot disk?

I have a slave drive and my system treats it like a plain drive letter.....

I would think something else is up... for the random reboot.... power surge/ power failure.... maybe the PC rebooted after lightning strikes???

can't you just attach the drive again as a slave and view the data???
 
There was no power surge. It just rebooted, about an hour after I left. I attached the drive in every configuration I could think of. It is inaccessable. Just wondering if anyone else has a deeper knowledge of this.
 
Oooh, the illusive Larry comes out to play :D

Anyway, what configurations have you tried out?

Try hooking it up as the primary device on your other IDE channel (ie take out your CD/DVD drives and hook up the hard drive). Does the drive itself make any noises to make you think it's broken?

Did you install any updates before this happened? Flashed your BIOS? Installed a service pack? anything?
 
I can't hook it up as primary because it doesn't have an OS. However I tried it with my DVD and CD disconnected. I did hook it up as primary on my second channel with nothing else plugged in. There was a noise once when I tried booting when I got nothing, but that was the only time. I actually thought it came from my boot drive. I didn't install anything before I left, that's why I was so suprised. I've never flashed my BIOS (scares me to do it :) ).
 
Also, this is what it says in the WD website. I haven't had a chance to really even read it completely through. I will as soon as I get home today. Give it a look. Thanks.
 
I would check all jumpers, swap drives on IDE cable.
Try diff settings for your IDE channels in your BIOS.

EDIT: maybe ur cable is broken, try a different "
 
I tried everything suggested already. I took it to GeekSquad today and they checked it out. It's dead according to them, couldn't access anything at all. It's under warranty still so off to WD it is. Oh well, was bound to happen sometime. It sucks loosing 250 GB (it was full). Thanks for your help all.
 
Now my problem has escalated. I decided I was going to format my C:\ but my CD drive wasn't hooked up. I hooked it up and tried to boot, and same problem, it hung during "Detecting IDE". So I unplugged my HD and it booted to CD no problem, just like with my slave. I played around trying new cables, different configs, different jumpers adn got nothing. So I decided as a last ditch effort to flash my BIOS thinking maybe something was wrong with my board. Well, that was unsuccessful as now I cannot even get it to power on when I hit the power button......this is all too fun.

Suggestions?

PS: I already ordered a new mobo anyway from NewEgg last night
 
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