Here's one I've never had before. Earlier this week, my wife informed me
that a business-related CD ROM that she uses regularly on my machine, was
failing to read. She was right. Further investigation revealed that the
machine, a Dell, could no longer see my 250GB data drive either. This drive
is a Seagate, and was replaced probably a little over a year ago, because
its predecessor, which had been in there a long time, had begun dying with
nasty noises and erratic reads. Both the CD ROM drive and the Seagate, are
on IDE channel 1, in cable select format.

My first suspicion was that something had happened to the mother board's IDE
driver IC, but the Windoze diagnostic said that it was ok. Further checks
disconnecting stuff, showed the problem to be the Seagate drive that was
hanging up the channel 1 IDE bus. As soon as it was disconnected, the CD ROM
drive came back on line.

I got a new 320GB drive from Maplin's for 49 quid (how good a deal is that
?) and was able to restore its contents from the external backup drive that
I have, and which does a backup automatically every night.

I've never had a drive fail in this way before, problems usually being motor
or bearing related. Anyone else had it ?

Arfa