Windows 7: Strange Hard Drive Issue

As of late my computer has been doing something strange. Basically the computer will lock up momentarily then resume normal operation.



However when I go to restart the computer the hard drive will totally disappear from BIOS and usually it will stay gone until I physically open my computer case and swap out which sata port my hard drive uses on the motherboard.

This is what is baffling to me though, after swapping out the sata port everything works like it should. The hard drive isnt showing any signs of failure and the mother board appears to work fine as well, matter of fact the sata port that originally couldn't read the HDD resumes normal operation.

So I do not understand what could be going wrong with my system. Is it the motherboard? Is it the Hard Drive? Both? Or do I have some sort of malware causing this?

I believe the cause of this was a defacto sata cable. Since replacing the cable all has been running smooth *knocks on wood*.

Ill report back if this starts happening again.

If the problem continues I suggest you flash your bios. It happened to me on some older mobo/bios to have problems detecting the hdd and/or other devices after restarting.

I am currenlty having the same problem. During normal operation the pc freezes, then after a time (sometimes short, sometimes long) it will resume working. If i open up the my computer link, my HDD for storage and software is not shown.( i am using an OCZ Agility 2 128G SSD for primary drive.) Try to restart the pc and it doesn't show the hdd in the list while detecting drives BEFORE windows loads, then freezes at the windows 7 spash screen for what feels like 5-10 minutes or more before it boots up and the hdd is still not in the hardware list. If i restart multiple times it eventually reappears in the list and works fine. Only changes i have made during the time frame that this has been happening is installing the beta for Rift. I removed/uninstalled Rift and made sure all drivers are up to date. If i physically disconnect the drive the pc boots right up and runs with no problems at all. If i run the disk repair option during startup i get and error at the final step that says something along the lines of "System Integrity Error 0x490" reason listed is "patch is not working or failed". I can check the exact error description the next time it does this. Anyone else have a simular issue especially lately...i am thinking that something in a recent windows or driver update may have caused the issue,

Thanks for any help in advance.

jimhem windows updates doesn't update automatically hardware drivers. Even if it did it shouldn't affect the detection of the HDD in the BIOS. It could be a bad interface cable. I suggest flashing bios and/or firmware for the HDD. You should backup the data before that and also you cna run hw manufacturer diagnostic tests. HD Tune can read SMART attributes via Windows so you can check if the HDD is bad.

Rapsody, I flashed the newest bios available for my mb. Updated all drivers manually from manufacturers' websites and update utilities. Replaced the sata cable with a brand new one I just purchased. The warranty on the drive expired in mid-2008. I have come to the conclusion at this point that the hdd is failing and on it's way out. I copied any critical/must have data to another drive and will be replacing this one soon.

Sent from my PC36100 (EVO) using Tapatalk