hard drive dissapears from computer

[MMM]

I am still having this issue after going through all the recommendations online. The drive works fine in a hard drive dock but when in a computer it will disappear at least once a day. This seems to happen when I am watching a video of some sort that is stored on that hard drive

I agree with cboucher, Your Hard Drive is probably starting to fail.
Have you considered it could be a electrical circuit intermittent problem as this is the reason Diagnostics is not detecting any problems.

I have had many Hard drives fail due to the circuit board.

If you think it is OK in the dock leave it there.

 

[Der-PC-Mann]

Wow, oddly enough I've never looked into HDD temperatures this much, after reading this I'm quite concerned, as my HDD(s) get into the 40s, but they operate just fine and I have recently scanned them all with no problems. Is the 40s really cause for concern? It seems like very little, in retrospect.

Just had a peak at the temps, and one HDD maxed at 43c, and another at 41c, whereas they idle (not 100% idle, I assume) at 36c and 35c, respectively. I have a decent 100mm fan blowing air right at them, albeit the fan is usually at a low RPM. Personally, I've always figured that 40s are OK, but I'd get pretty concerned at 50c+.

In all my years, I've not once had an HDD fail on me, and going back some, I've had some really badly cooled computers and some old used HDDs, so I honestly struggle to see the concern at these temps. =|

 

[mikee]

my hard drive temps don't go above 40 so thats good. I'm just really stumped as to what is causing this

 

[cboucher]

I don't know if this helps, but I've run into several hard drives that failed without showing any errors on a diagnostic test. It does happen...

 

[Der-PC-Mann]

Yeah, my brother recently had a couple of HDDs failed, and he said he had previously tested them and they came up clean. :|

 

[mikee]

I have noticed lately that it doesn't happen unless I try and watch a movie or something that is stored on the drive. If I skip into the middle or skip around in the video it will freeze and the hard drive will disappear. Not in all cases but with amazing regularity it will happen. Just now I was trying to watch a show and it happened so I restarted the computer tried to watch it again and within 5 seconds it happened again.




If I have to replace the drive what do you recommend as a replacement 1.5tb - 2tb that are good quality and last long

 

[cboucher]

I've always had good luck with Western Digital products...

 

[Der-PC-Mann]

Whatever you get, treat it with care, make sure it's from a good source, avoid as much vibration as possible, and keep it nice and cool; these are at least a few ways to improve the chances that your HDD is gonna go that extra mile to keep your data.

 

[mikee]

the hard drive is in the very bottom 3.5 inch bay away from everything else generating heat and runs at 35C. I noticed there are 2 speeds of drive in this capacity range 7200rpm and 5900 rpm but will there really be much of a difference in speed between them? This drive mainly holds my documents, music movies etc and I have windows on my smaller drive

 

[cboucher]

There probably won't be too much of a speed difference since it sounds like it's more of a storage drive application anyways. You may see a little longer lifespan on the slower drive as less stress is put on the hardware, though.