2nd HDD not seen anymore - Win 7 Pro

[Dicky-Art]

All of a sudden I've noticed that my 2nd HDD is no longer there! It has worked without a problem for 4 years almost to the day!
No shortcuts are on my desktop to that drive, my computer doesn't see it. Nor does the Bios screen.

Help me please!

 

[Scott]

Sounds like a loose cable. Worse case scenario is the drive is dead. Shortcuts shouldn't disappear from the desktop themselves though they will delete themselves if you tried to open it and it says that it couldn't find the destination, not before asking though.

 

[Dicky-Art]

No all shortcuts to the 2nd HDD have gone without trying to open them. All my documents and MS Office and some other programmes were on the 2nd drive.
No lose cables, lots of dust, but no joy.

 

[SpyderTracks]

No all shortcuts to the 2nd HDD have gone without trying to open them. All my documents and MS Office and some other programmes were on the 2nd drive.
No lose cables, lots of dust, but no joy.

Have you checked in disk management and BIOS?

 

[ubuysa]

If the BIOS isn't seeing it then it's a hardware issue I think. If you have another PC try plugging it in there, otherwise get a cheap drive caddy and plug it in as a USB attached device. If you still can't see it then I'd suspect a dead drive.

 

[Dicky-Art]

Removed the HDD and used a USB3 caddy. Shows it as drive E: in Windows Explorer. Then it disappears.
When I access it just says "you need to format the disc in drive E before you can use it" "Windows Explorer has stopped working"..........

I have heard that data recovery is very very expensive!

 

[Tony1044]

Sounds like either the power on it is failing or plain simple corruption.

You could try launching disk manager and see if it's there with no drive letter (and then right-click assign drive letter) but it sounds like hardware

 

[Scott]

Data recovery is insanely expensive if it needs to be retrieved from the platters themselves. It's ALWAYS best to have a backup of anything important, it seems expensive at the time to spend £100 on a backup drive and spend a half hour or so every week backing up, but you are so glad you did when it comes to occasions like this.

I would recommend trying the drive on a different PC, just to make sure it's not your PC that's the issue.

 

[Dicky-Art]

The last message I got when trying to read E: .."Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)"
I will get it checked on another PC.
Thanks for the input.

 

[ubuysa]

Removed the HDD and used a USB3 caddy. Shows it as drive E: in Windows Explorer. Then it disappears.
When I access it just says "you need to format the disc in drive E before you can use it" "Windows Explorer has stopped working"..........

I have heard that data recovery is very very expensive!

The last message I got when trying to read E: .."Data Error (cyclic redundancy check)"
I will get it checked on another PC.
Thanks for the input.

I'm afraid that sounds like a dead drive to me. It would be worth trying it on another PC just to be sure but don't hold your breath.