Hard drive - disappeared?

It is possible that eithe rthe hard drive, or the IDE controller on your motherboard died with no malicious action.

Start by checking if the hard drive performs it's POST when you start up the PC.
Disconnect the IDE cable from the drive, and listen closely when you turn the power on.
If you hear the drive spin up, and the heads seek, then the drive may be okay (at least physically)
Run the test again, with the IDE cable connected.
If the drive posts, then the problem may be with the IDE controller on the motherboard.
The easiest way to test this is with another hard drive. (or try your drive in another PC)

If the drive does not POST when connected to the motherboard, try disconnecting any other IDE devices from the board, and see if the drive will post now, if so, one of the other drives may have died.

If the drive still does not post, then the on-board IDE controller is likely dead.

Again, the best way to verify this is with a known good drive.

If the on-board IDEcontroller is bad, your choices are: new motherboard, or a plug in IDE controller card.

If the drive does not POST when disconnected from the motherboard, then the electronics on the drive have died.
Data recovery is not simple.
The cheapest way, is to get the exact same make and model drive (try for the same revision even) and have a repair technician swap the drive controllers.

Chas

If it didnt even show your cd - the interface (ide controller) has gne bye bye. This means that the hdd is fine - it just cannot be run

I have experienced another situation: The drive does spin up, but not fully. Stick the drive to your ear, listen closely and you'll know. The sound either goes whoosh-click-clack or whoosh-quiet-whoosh.

In this case, either the drive's motor is dying or your power supply is failing. It may sound strange, but my supposedly-dead HDD worked like magic again after I changed the power supply.

I installed another hard drive and it works fine. I haven't tried this 'dead' drive in another pc, but will try that to see what happens. I had everything backed up on Cd, so I don't want to do any expensive data recovery, I just am curious why it 'took a dump' on me. Is there a malicious program someone can use to do this to my hard drive? if so, what is it called and how can I prevent it? (firewall, software?) Thanks for the help.

Maybe your drive has bummed out, try to make your problem hard disk slave to another computer and see if it will be detected, if not, well that's bad news. Now, if your hard disk is detected maybe there is something wrong with the IDE controller or with the motherboard, do try to attach a different hard disk, and observe what happen.

Try freezing the hard disk ( put it inside a plastic bag and yes, in a fridge ) then leave for a few minutes to return to normal room temp. then attach it to the computer and see what happens.

You might try a Hard drive diagnostic like a 090/90 test , a free download from Tuff test? This will test the drive for post and read write errors, I have had this repair one drive and confirm several other drives as bad.

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