Back again. It's just ONE problem after the other...

I recently formatted a brand new 80 gig hard drive and installed Windows XP Pro SP2 on it. This one is my main hard drive, and my secondary is a 200 gig. It's about two years old, and was brand new when I bought it. I would give you the specific details on it, but therein lies my problem. My computer boots FINE, and I can easily view and access files on my C drive, but I can very rarely access my D drive unless I restart several TIMES and check Explorer to see if it even shows up.

I thought maybe it was just a loose cord or something on the inside, but I've made sure everything was tightly where it should be, and it still does this. It is a problem for me because all of my music and videos and games and whatnot are stored there, and I have no access to them.

I am out of options at this point because I'm even less educated on computer hardware than I am software. I hope the answer I get isn't that my 200 gig is failing, because I just got to GO through that issue with a six-year-old hard drive (which is why I got this new one).

If any info is REQUIRED about the screwy HD to troubleshoot, let me know and I'll reboot my computer until it shows itself :|2 things you can do:

Replace the IDE ribbon cable...they do go bad.
DLoad and run the diagmostics from the drive manuf. website to make sure that drive is not failing.

The age of a drive is no indication of how healthy it is...