Hi guys, Been around here for a long time (usually on the helping end). Now it's time to get some help of my own. I've had a bizarre hard drive issue come up, and can't figure it out for the life of me. Background: Computer stopped working one day. Came home and the hard drive was throwing errors (Disk boot error, insert system disk and press enter). Took the drive (and another I had in there too) out and tried it in another computer. Both drives worked fine. That led me to believe there was some problem with the IDE controller on the motherboard. Put a new computer together over the weekend and now neither of the drives is being recognized, either by XP or in the BIOS. I've again tried conencting the drives to several other computers, to no avail. I tried putting both drives together on the primary cable of several other computers. I did the master/slave approach and cable select, secondary IDE and nothing worked. I also tried an IDE cable that only had one connector, didn't work either. Put both drives (one at a time) in my USB external enclosure, and still nothing worked...the computer wouldn't even recognize that a mass storage device was connected, via USB. Both drives power/spin up, and when you turn them on, make the usual startup noises that the drives should be making. Both are Western Digital Caviar drives (one is 160GB, the other is 120). Running the Western Digital lifeguard software yields that no WD drives are present on the system (no kidding?). Any help on this would be GREATLY appreciated. I have some data on there that I hadn't had a chance to back up yet, since the 2nd drive was in fact my backup drive. Thanks in advance!!

In my experience when nothing else works this will. If the drive spins spinrite willl retrieve the data. It may take 2-3 days of constant running. Good luck. http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

I should have mentioned, I tried spinrite a few days ago, and it didn't work. Neither drive will show up.

One last shot. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Test...

Thanks for the help Per. I haven't had a chance to try the second one yet, but it says it queries the OS or BIOS to find the drives. I'll give it a shot though. Any other ideas anyone?

There may be a solution HERE.