D SATA Hard Drive disappears after random amount of time.

My D 200gb SATA hard drive disappears around 1-90 mins while on windows 7. I have tried registry repairs and alot of things. Its not faulty cables because i used to have win Xp on exact same computer but reformatted to windows 7. Rebooting makes the hard drive reappear but it still disappears after a while. It still shows up in the bios though. When it disappears, it is completely gone, even in device manager.

Someone please help, most of my important data is on my 200gb D drive and i only use C for my os and some other things like Firefox because its only 80gb so someone please help

Hey dwarf, sorry to be such a newb but i didnt know how to do most of what you just said. I have had it on different ports but they had the same problems and on some ports it didnt even get detected. Xp had no problems at all with the hard drive and at the time I was dual booting xp and 7 and when I went to 7 it would not work but when i went back to xp it would still work fine.

Gee I love how everyone rushes to answer your questions in this forum -_-

I seem to be having the same problem (albeit on a Mac) with one of my hard drives - It works fine for some time (usually a few hours) then just disappears. Sometime there is a message saying that it was disconnected without correctly unmounting. Rebooting temporarily fixes it. Is there anything I can do, or should I assume the drive is failing and replace it?

iMacThere4iAm said:

I seem to be having the same problem (albeit on a Mac) with one of my hard drives - It works fine for some time (usually a few hours) then just disappears. Sometime there is a message saying that it was disconnected without correctly unmounting. Rebooting temporarily fixes it. Is there anything I can do, or should I assume the drive is failing and replace it?

I would defenitely replace the drive as a last choice. I would try unplugging the cable that connects your hard drive to your computer (SATA i think i dont know about macs) and then plug it back in firmly. Also some hardware/hard drive fixing/scanning software could help you but i dont know what to recommmend cos your on a mac. Im pretty sure you would have more luck on a mac forum cos as you can see this is a windows 7 forum

I used to have this problem with one of my hard drives, I fixed the problem by replacing the cable with one that has a latch.

I had a similar problem with a WD 150GB Velociraptor drive which was my Win7 boot drive. It began to flake out and "disappear" (per the BIOS, and also per WinXP which was bootable from a separate hard drive).

Running under WinXP, the drive would simply drop out. Depending on what was going on at the time this might cause WinXP to just hang, or maybe it could limp along and survive without it. But it definitely was an unexpected hardware failure.

Running under Win7 (if I could ever get to boot to it) it might or might not ever make it through the complete boot process. I would turn the machine off, let it "rest", turn it back on... and it might or might not "fix things". Sure seemed like the drive was starting to fail.

Fortunately, I was eventually able to get a reliable backup, so at least I wasn't terrified of losing valuable data.

Then, I disconnected and reconnected the SATA cable, to the drive and also to the motherboard. Kind of made the problem go away... maybe, sometimes.

I then tried another SATA connector on the motherboard. Seemed to work great. Then it started to fail again, a few weeks later.

Deciding it was the drive itself, I finally swapped the drive with a replacement I'd ordered several weeks earlier when I first thought it was the drive that was going... but ultimately concluded (falsely, as it turns out) that it was a bad SATA connector on the motherboard.

Seemed to fix everything, so I decided it was the drive after all.

Then, a few weeks later, it started to flake out again! Grrr!! Obviously, I'd discarded what probably was a perfectly good hard drive.

This time I changed SATA cables, taking a brand new unused one out of a sealed plastic bag. I also tried yet a third SATA connector on the motherboard... hoping this one would be fine.

Knock wood, it's been about three weeks now and everything remains stable. Fingers crossed it remains this way.

So, no real answers to your specific situation in my story. But you just might keep trying things... different SATA connector, different SATA cable, and keep hoping it does the trick. Worst case, replace the drive and hope that fixes it.

Ok i replaced the sata cable with one exactly the same but this one is unused. I cant tell if its fixed or not cos its only been running well for a couple hours so leave this thread open please.

Ok, i still have the same problem. I even tried switching the sata slot from sata 4 to 3 but still exact same problem. I didnt have this problem with xp so maybe its windows 7 driver problems or sata controller. Any more ideas anyone?