hard drive dissapears from computer

[mikee]

Recently my secondary hard drive will randomly disapear from windows and will not show up again until reboot. It shows up in the bios fine. I have ran HD tune a few times and the diagnostics show nothing is wrong. I also opened the computer and checked cable connections they are all in tight. One troubling thing that happened recently was my keyboard tray fell off my desk and smashed into the tower and I also recently blew the dust out with a can of compressed air

Recently it happened while I was skipping through a movie in media player classic and just froze mpc and when I went to re open the file the whole drive was gone from my computer.

I really hope this drive is not dying since I have no backups of most of the stuff. I have backups of some non replaceable stuff like photos but about 400gb of tv and movies will be gone. So far the drive has only disappeared twice maybe I'm being paranoid

 

[cboucher]

It sounds like your HDD is on the way out. The best thing to do at this point is to back up everything you don't want to lose onto another drive (preferably an external drive) while you still can and then just replace the dying HDD.

 

[mikee]

the hdd is only 3 years old and checks out on all the diagnostics I have run. I have run hd tune


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

this is what is says I don't know what the items in yellow mean but they have been like that for a long time.

Also I don't have anything big enough to handle backing up this drive It is about 800gb full.

I did upload all my valuable photos to skydrive but it still leaves me with 750gb to back up somewhere.

 

[ukballer1012]

Are you sure your hard drive is getting enough air in the case to cool down? Hard drives, especially at 10,000 rpm tend to heat up very quickly and that causes them to expand and when they cool down, you start to lose some accuracy with the read/write heads on the disk. It looks like you built your system so you might not have put this into consideration. In the future consider adding a bay fan to cool the hard drive directly. I would just buy a new HDD if I were you; it's too risky to continue using that with the vulnerability of losing your precious data. Just buy a new HDD and hook it up to a free sata controller slot on your motherboard and just copy the files over directly. SATA HDDs are super easy to install too: just plug in the data cable and the power connector, which is usually molex, and you're ready to go. Also if heat was the problem, you may want to consider establishing a better airflow through your case which can be achieved with case fans. I noticed your HDD temp is on the borderline of being overheated. Good luck!

Edit: Once you transfer all those files over to the other disc try reformatting your old HDD to NTFS again (this wipes the memory) and see if the issue still occurs with that diagnostic software you have. Just make sure that HDD software is from the manufacturer, a lot of them vary significantly since not all HDD's are designed the same way. You can usually find software by looking around on the manufacturer's site. If the issue continues, trash the HDD but you might find some use for the old HDD for something else if the issue doesn't persist though I wouldn't bet on it not happening again.

 

[mikee]

Just ran some seatools tests seagates own software for diagnosing problems with their drives and it passed everything I tried. drive self test, smart self test and generic short test. Is 38 c warm for a hdd? my other drive which is closer to the heatsink and gets much more activity since it is my windows drive only runs about 29c.

My large hard drive is only accessed to load a movie or music file or what not then it just sits pretty much inactive.

I will check to see if there is a spot for a fan near the hard drive bays. I'm pretty sure there isn't though. If there is it would require somehow removing the drive ways themseives to get at.


Edit: I have the intention to build a new rig this summer. Nothing special but just something that is a little more modern and I will likely have more fans and airflow

 

[ukballer1012]

I shouldn't have said borderline over heating. You should be concerned when it gets into the mid 40s. But when you ran that diagnostic test there may have been less disk accessing than opposed to a situation where there is a lot of disc activity. Also, that windows drive might have a lesser RPM rating than the terabyte one. But judging from what you told me I wouldn't touch that disk. The warping from changing from hot temperatures (mid 40's minimum) to cooler temperatures all of the sudden is permanent damage. But I'm not positive that overheating is the issue so don't go out buying a fan. I personally would just buy a new HDD.

 

[Rackmountsales]

Yeah! That's right cooling fan is not the issue, you should change the HDD.

 

[mikee]

I wonder why these diagnostics aren't telling me anything about an impending failure. Every test I have ran the drive passed and gives no warning. I think I will at least go buy a 2 tb external hard drive just to be safe and for the future

 

[mikee]

Ok so it happened again but I found this in the event log for the approximate time period of the disappearance this time

By mikee286 at 2012-03-30


it says "the driver detected a controller error"

does this bring up any new ideas as to what this could be?

I also did some googling and found this but all the guy did was switch sata ports.

Solved Secondary Hard Drive Disappears - Windows 7 Forums

Maybe I will try that.

 

[mikee]

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