EggXpert

This is a 160 Seagate internal drive.  Its connected via IDE, which is the only IDE drive in my PC.  It was working just fine in my media center machine, I out grew it and put it in my main PC for extra storage.   Ive noticed that the drive will disappear from the "My Computer" section.  Occasionally its there, and others its not.  Also, I'll come to my PC and find a triangle saying "Delayed Write Failure" (or something of the sort).  Its referring to that drive.  At this point theres only about 30gb in use.  Could this mean the drive is failing?  Or is there another issue?

Have you tried using another cable as well as a different power connector just in case one of your is bad?

if so it is likely dying.

Are you using a 40 or 80 pin cable. If a 40, try an 80. Check the bios and make sure that the controller is not set to a higher setting then your drive can handle.( UDMA). Enable SMART in bios and use something like speedfan to check if everything is OK. This will give you a good idea if the drive is dying.

I guess the drive is failing. Can you test by installing it in a different PC and using it? If you not experiencing any other issues with your other drives then it is probably just the drive. Delay write errors means that windows tried to write and could not. You can enable SMART but i hear it doesn't help too much. Do you happen to hear clicking sounds coming from the drive? Usually drives just c**p out like this and its the end. Back your data as quick as possible.

I like to use Speedfan because it not only reports the SMART readings, which do not make much sense, but it tells you weather they are OK or not. Plus it puts performance and health or a bar graph, which even I can read.