Hi.

I keep having problems with my hard drive dissapearing from My computer. It's a brand new drive (Hitachi Deskstar 320gb), BIOS detects, it's there in disk management but it's black and I can't do anything with it.

If I try to refresh the list in management I'll get errors and it writes to my eventlog; ID: 25, error code: 0x80070002@020A0023

I tried going on google and Microsoft.com but alas..

Ok.. let me try going back to basics and see what I have done already..

Cables - check, drive is detected by BIOS and Windows
Damage - check, same as above. It dissapears and comes back
Drivers - reinstalled them all, twice, didn't help..
system restore - did help until next reboot or something

Drive has been formatted with NTFS by Vista, drive is not the drive containing my OS, it's a SATA II drive connected with SATA pwr cable from my PSU.

At first I noticed this after installing Crysis, it told me that I needed to install a Windows update, which I did and from then on this crap started. Removing that patch seemed to help but since I'm posting here... I guess not.


Please help me, my patience is lost and this is driving me nuts. Please. In advance, thanks.

Error message when I try to refresh Disk Management:
An unexpected error has occured. Check the system event log for more information..blah..blah.. Restart Disk Management or the computer...

Not exactly helping...

From Event viewer:
A failure was encountered while retrieving the volume properties. Error code: 0x80070002@020A0023
(event id: 25)

I also now have this unknown device, which Windows asks me to install drivers for. It cant find drivers.. that problem/solution thingy tells me I need a Win patch. But it's not valid for my system apparently. I've never seen this unkown device before so I think it has something to do with it.

FYI my motherboard is ECS GM51GM-M

I appreciate ANY help whatsoever.

Re the unknown device...did you insert the ECS autorun drivers disk...and give it a chance to install the driver for device?

What typed info is reflected for this drive in Disk Management? All typed visible data, please.

I don't find a motherboard model which you listed...but I do find an ECS C51GM-M, http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Downloads...D=6&LanID=9

Louis

About the model no. 'twas a typeo, sorry about that. It's a C51GM-M.

I have the latest chipset drivers from Nvidia, the CD that came with my motherboard is intended for XP so I kinda have to download them.

This unkown device.. is no device. It appeared after installing the SATA drive. I've had both XP and Vista running with the same kind of drive previously until it crashed. If you asked me I'd say it's Vista being a pain but I can't do system restores everytime I wanna play music or whatever.

Disk Management info on the drive, not much and I can post a screeny if you want. But here's what I got..
Disk2, Dynamic, ready, labeled as single volume, 298gb ntfs, f:\ and OK status. (**EDIT: should mention that the drive currently shows up in my computer 'cause I did a sys restore 10 minutes ago)**

The only thing that keeps my spirit up about this is the fact that I know it aint broken. just the OS that doesn't like me..


Thanks Louis


**EDIT: alright, I just put in the motherboard disc to see if it could help but the "unkown device" was gone.. heh.. go figure..

I just read this line: Note: Only Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate editions support dynamic disks.

So what version of Vista is installed?

And, for my own education...why is that drive set up as a dynamic disk?

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/e...f621ce1033.mspx

Thanks.

Louis

Why the drive is setup as dynamic? Because they guy who did so (your's truly) did so not knowing what it was. But I do have Ultimate so it's not a problem right.

Anyway, I've learned that my "unkown device" is the reason to my issues here. If I click dont ask me again when it asks to install drivers which it cant find the drive will dissapear. If I make it look for drivers it will be alright even though it cant find drivers for a non exictent device! I have installed chipset drivers over and over and I have no new devices I didn't have before.. I'm just glad I can acess my drive though

Ideas? thoughts? anything?

EDIT: I just read that link mate, thanks for it by the way. I'm planning to get another SATA drive in the future and I was thinking that maybe dynamic is the way to go if I can up the drive performance and/or mirror the contents of them. Bad or good idea?

I'm just a home user, I don't do anything of a professional nature when it comes to computing or anything else (I'm retired and computers are just something I happen to appreciate and like) . So I tend to just try to stay with simple stuff when it comes to computing.

I can't tell you anything about dynamic disks other than what we both have read...but I see it as something that is designed for enterprise/business computing and is somewht of a carryover from the Win 2K era. I guess that I don't see any real advantage in the setting used by a typical owner/user of a system.

But...there are a number of persons frequenting this forum who are much more knowledgeable than I am and who have experience in dealing with such. If I were contemplating using dynamic disks on my system, I would wait for some feedback from them.

Louis

Yeah, if they see this thread

Thanks again for the help though Louis


So, here is to the experts; dynamic discs seems sort of similar to a RAID array. Is it any chance having dynamic discs can harm them in any way? How do I change it back to regular without formatting, if possible? Lastly is this beneficial and something I want to do if I want to increase performance on let's say a 320GB SATA drive and a 500gb SATA drive?


As a side note.. whats up with Vista, this unkown device described earlier and my hard drive dissapearing?

Maybe this will explain it better. Helps me understand it
http://technet.microsoft.com/

Thanks for that

Apparently i cant change back to basic without format so I'll just stick to that.