hard drive dissapears from computer

the new drive will be going into my next rig as well which likely will be being built this summer. I may try using this drive as an external drive and see what happens there.

Still open to ideas on how to remedy this issue though no diagnostics have turned up anything wrong so far so it may not even be dead at all. It doesn't disconnect in linux but then again i wasn't running linux for too long maybe an hour
 
Most diagnostic software only detect issues with the the actual disk surfaces inside the hard drive. The little circuit board inside the hard drive could have issues as well.
 
someone told me the hard drive controller may be failing. I know there is a hard drive controller on the drive itself but isn't there also one on the motherboard?
 
someone told me the hard drive controller may be failing. I know there is a hard drive controller on the drive itself but isn't there also one on the motherboard?

Yes, there are also hard drive controllers that plug into one of the expansion slots on a motherboard, but that's pretty old school. Most modern motherboards have hard drive controllers built in just like you're thinking.
 
but it's more likely that the drive itself has a bad controller?

I did some searching around on the net and found nothing but people mad at problems they are having with this exact drive. most are from 2008-09 and some say their issues went away with a firmware update but I tried to update but the update program doesn't detect my seagate drive just the western digital 120gb drive.
 
but it's more likely that the drive itself has a bad controller?

I did some searching around on the net and found nothing but people mad at problems they are having with this exact drive. most are from 2008-09 and some say their issues went away with a firmware update but I tried to update but the update program doesn't detect my seagate drive just the western digital 120gb drive.

You said that this particular drive was the only one having problems, right? If other drives had problems then I might suspect the motherboard, but if there are only problems with this one particular hard drive then logic would dictate that the problem lies with this one particular hard drive. Hard drives in general are not long lasting devices by nature. When I was in school for computers/networking our instructor (who worked on a server farm previously) told us that you should only expect a hard drive to last about two years. Of course this was probably 10 years ago or more, but the idea he was trying to get across is that hard drives eventually die and you should be backing up your data religiously no matter what. I realize that these things cost money so you don't want to let go of it so easily, but you should be focusing on getting your data backed up while the drive still works a little as opposed to trying to save a piece of dying hardware.
 
Your absolutly right about not trying to save a piece of dying hardware. that just made me think of my computer as a whole being as old as it is. But if I get a new drive I will be moving it from this computer to my next one. My 120 gb drive came from my old rig and has been going strong for about 6 years. The big drive with problems is only approaching 4 years. Also I thought when I bought it that by now they would have 10tb drives but the technology seems to have plateaued in this area.


the reason i asked earlier about rpm speed is I am thinking of getting one of these two drives but don't know if there is enough of a difference to justify getting the 7200rpm one for more money

Seagate ST2000DL003 Barracuda Green 2TB Hard Drive - 2TB, 5900 RPM, 64MB, SATA-6Gb/s at TigerDirect.com

and

Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB Serial ATA Hard Drive - 2TB, 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gb/s at TigerDirect.com


EDIT: oh wait they are the same price but still which one would make a better files drive?
 
Both are essentially the same drive. The whole "green" thing with hard drives is just a marketing ploy. All they do is slow down the operating speed to reduce the amount of energy it consumes (most likely a negligible amount anyways). Unless you are trying to put together a superfast gaming PC you're probably not going to notice much of a difference. Although to be perfectly honest, I've had bad experiences with Seagate drives in the past. Western Digital is my drive of choice. I'm sure there are plenty of people here that will tell you that Seagates are the best and Western Digitals are crap. In the end, it's all personal opinion and you just have to take it with a grain of salt.
Peace...
 
I would agree with you on the western digital because the one I have seems pretty invincible and runs 10 degrees colder than my seagate

there is also this one but it has pretty bad reviews

WD Caviar Green WD20EARX 3.5 Hard Drive - 2TB, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB, 3.5 at TigerDirect.com

it really depends on what you consider a bad experience. some will think negatively about a company after getting only one bad product and never look back but some will get many bad products from a company in which case I think it can be justified



Edit: I'm going to try updating the firmware today but the iso file is sort of fishy since all it contains is a drive detect exe which can be launched within windows to tell you what drives you have and a readme file so somehow I doubt it has a bootable environment on it with the firmware. I'm still going to try it out.


A decent number of people say they have similar experiences to mine that the firmware sd1b fixed


EDIT2: Firmware update failed (couldn't find the seagate drive to update)

I tried unplugging the other western digital drive but same result. I guess I will just buy a new drive and use this one in my dock.
 
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