HDD M.I.A in Macbook Pro dual SSD+HDD setup

[prometheus44]

Guys, I'm freaking out.

I've had a dual setup on my Macbook Pro for more than a year, with a 1tb Samsung in the HD bay (not original Apple), and a 256gb Samsung SSD in the optical bay.

It's always worked fine, until a few minutes ago. I was browsing my Dropbox folder that's synced to the HDD, and all of a sudden the folder just disappeared all the "Favorites" in the sidebar vanished, my programs using data on the HDD (Aperture, Together, Dropbox.app etc) freaked out.
I checked Disk Utility to see what was going on, and the HDD was just gone -not even greyed out.

I immediately restarted, but the HDD is still nowhere to be found.

Both hard drives are Time Machine'd on two different external drives and my important documents are all synced on Dropbox, so I haven't lost anything per se (that is, if the HDD really is dead)
Still, I'm far from home and I'd rather not have a hard drive with so much personal information shipped.

Does anyone have any idea of what might be going on? How I could fix it? If anything I could have my screwdrivers shipped to open up the computer, but even then I doubt I could really "see" anything...

Any help or advice would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks...

 

[ayeying]

Maybe the hard drive's connector is loose?

 

[bcburrows]

Maybe the hard drive's connector is loose?

That is exactly what happened to me.... A quick ten minutes and resolved, and it allowed me to clean the inside as well....

 

[prometheus44]

Maybe the hard drive's connector is loose?

Maybe... I restarted twice and still it didn't come back. Then actually shut down, waited a few minutes, and back it was.
Could the connector still be loose?

Anyway, I'm Time Machining and copying everything I can now in case it happens again.

 

[ayeying]

Maybe... I restarted twice and still it didn't come back. Then actually shut down, waited a few minutes, and back it was.
Could the connector still be loose?

Anyway, I'm Time Machining and copying everything I can now in case it happens again.

What do you mean still be loose? It's a physical item that even restarting won't do anything. Open it up and check it.