hard drive about to croak?

[Hammer]

this weekend I turned on the box and she didnt detect the Master, wanted me to insert system disc. went into bios to detect, no joy. after about 3 reboots it detected and ran for about 24hrs with several shutdowns/startups. then it happened again, I checcked all connections but it still to several reboots to get it back. I think my drive is on the way out or could it be the controlor on the Mobo?

[jokostel]

when a drive goes out ,usually the hard drive platters dont spin up and thats what happened here

[Ed_S]

Don't forget the cable is a possibility, too. Had one of mine doing similar, sometimes find drives OK, sometimes not. Checked all connections, tried drive in other machine, etc. Replaced the cable, problem has never re-occurred. No visable damage to cable. (Until I cut it up, anyway!)

[nk4]

I had exactly the same problem and it was related to the power supply cable.
Sometimes out of the blue, the harddrive in windows would start making weird noises and system would crash, or the drive would not be detected at all. Turned out the power cable was the problem, and now everything is fine.

[jokostel]

i have had the platters sieze and some cables were bad at other times as well..

[unknown]

the harddrive can be bad. try to listen to your hard drive spinning. if the spinning sound doenst come out, then it can be the little engine on your hard drive is bad.

[Hammer]

Thanks for all the info, I remade all the connections and replaced my cmos bat (I was getting a error on cmos every now and then also) and havent had a problem for days