Epic SATA Hard Drive FAIL! CCleaner...

Hi all!

I had some serious problems with my SATA Hard Drives last night...

I used CCleaner last night to do a "Disk Wipe" of the free space on my System and Secondary SATA disks. I also deleted random registry errors, backing up my reg to my (Secondary) Maxtor 160Gb HDD, ironically... and basically did some other (pointless) screwing around, trying to "tidy up" my OS. This was something that you HAD to do with XP, occasionally. After I was done, the Maxtor 160Gb SATA disappeared from Windows 7. Also, my main system disk (Seagate 1.5Tb SATA) went from being 15-30% full to 99% full. I was able to fix that drive by running "chkdsk /f", but the Secondary Maxtor 160Gb HDD was gone! Windows couldn't see it! Only the BIOS could.

I normally wouldn't care about a little 160Gb drive and format/remount the thing, but my brother (who died) left me his diaries, which were on that drive, so I really wanted to get the thing back up!

Warning!
Registry and "System Optimization" Apps don't help in Win7 much and they can do some Serious Damage! </warning that no one will listen to>

Keep in mind, I've been a tech for a living, so I did everything most techs would do, including using UBCD to run tests when I couldn't get it up in "Disk Management" in Windows 7. The Maxtor HDD passed an integrity check in one app, but a Maxtor app that let's you modify Acoustics/Speed didn't even find it (app probably only works with IDE & SCSI drives). That's when I got SeaTools and finally got the thing to back up, by running a "Long Drive Self Test". Phew! :thumbs up:

I hope this helps someone to either fix damage or realize that apps like CCleaner can really mess things up.