Windows 7 - Sometimes Win7 doesn't see my IDE hard drive

Hello,

First time here, first post. This looks like a great forum. I think I'll be visiting a lot.

So here's my issue: I boot off of a SATA drive but use an IDE for a second drive for backups. On some boots it sees the drive and on other boots it doesn't. It seems to be running 50/50.

Any idea what could be causing this and how I might increase the odds to, say, about 100%?

Thanks!
Mark

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Hello,

I just wanted to report how I solved this issue.

I made the connection about the problem and the Acronis software after lots of Googleing and reading I eventually found this post:
Take a note everyone and Acronis - - Wilders Security Forums

I looked at the drive in question in Device Manager and saw this...



Those two lowest driver are from the Acronis company. I had installed their virus on my computer to create an image of my old drive to my new. However, an uninstall will not remove everything.

Their software leaves behind unasked for, unwanted hooks into your hardware that through improper manual removal can render your computer unbootable.

Their virus also slows down your hardware which is why the drive was not beeing seen on boot but was was found after a rescan.

Acronis provides manual uninstall instructions here:
Wilders Security Forums - View Single Post - Remove True Image totally?

However, following those steps closely and slowly twice caused me not to be able to boot. Twice I had to go to a previous restore point as the recovery disk said it could not repair the problem.

Here is an easier and safer way:

1) Go into Device Manager and you will see an Acronis device. Delete that junk. (Why didn't their uninstall remove it? ~ virus ~)

2) Follow these instructions here: Removing Acronis SnapAPI Drivers | Knowledge Base

A note on those instructions: What they don't tell you is that if there is also an entry like tdrpman (or some variant) in that key, that is also their virus and you should delete that too.

3) Use the software named Everything and look for Acronis and delete all files and folders related to that virus (you may have to reboot to release locks).

4) Delete the Windows\System32\autoparnt.* files if they exist.

I ran jv 16 power tools but it found no Acronis entries to remove.

I think that is everything.

Oh, and I just want to say virus one more time so the search engines pick up that Acronis is a Virus!

Mark

Hi Mark,
I kinda had the same setup except it was 2 SATA drives. One drive ran the OS and other was backup drive. Well problem was the backup drive was physically going bad. So sometimes it would show up in windows explorer and other times it did not. I ran HDdiags on the backup drive and it failed. Sent drive into Western Digital for exchange. Put the new drive back in and worked fine everytime.

Check your Windows Event Viewer and see if you find any hard drive related errors in there.
Raj

I have the same problem too. I have a SATA drive (2 partitions) and an IDE drive (no partition). The IDE is a slave and used only for media files.

I actually have yet to see the IDE drive. It shows up in disk management and what not and I tried assigning a letter to it, but when I right click it, all options are grayed out and not clickable (meaning all "options" are not usable).

Run Spinrite on the drive in question.

Hi there
Easier solution - I've posted a thread also when this happens with USB drives.

Sometimes the drive letter gets deleted / changed to the same one as one already being used so you won't see it.

Go to Control Panel==>administrative tasks==>Computer management==>disk management.

Now you'll probably see Disk 1, 2 or Disk 3 or whatever with no letter assigned.
Just assign an available letter and you'll be fine --windows explorer will show it again. You don't need to do anything else. Just exit control panel and Windows explorer should show it again.


With Computers always try THE EASY options before looking for complcated hard to find possibilities. Most of the time (not always unfortunately) the easy solution will win.

Cheers
jimbo

I found that I am able to easily get the drive to display by going into "Disk Management" and running "Rescan Disks". The drive then instantly show as my D: drive then works great.

I ran HDDLife and it does show a slow spin-up time. So I wonder if, because Windows 7 boots so quickly now, that because the drive is taking so long it just ignores it? Just an unsubstantiated theory.

I will look into Spinrite.

Thanks!
Mark

Solved. See original post in this thread.